Fractal
by OnTheImportanceOfLungs
Summary: Just a glance, a glance at intention, a glance at misery, a glance at eternity. There are prices extracted from those who stare into the abyss. But for some, the abyss doesn't just stare back. A rewrite of The Wizard of the Kaleidoscope.
1. Exodus

Hi Guys.

Update (6/27/2013): This is everything I expected it to be.

This is a reboot of The Wizard of the Kaleidoscope, but throw everything you know about this world out the window. Not everything's been changed, but unlike Kaleidoscope, this fic is actually planned. And I daresay my writing's improved by leaps and bounds.

This fic is rated M. There are no lemons, just excessive violence and dark themes.

Changes: The magic is more mysterious, probably a bit more "babble-y", but if you pay attention, there's actual connection to the plot and all. The characters are a million times better. No one's going to burst out crying for no reason. There are original characters, but they're not stand ins for authorial masturbation, which I've learned to hate.

There are a few elements from Naruto and from the Nasuverse. It might actually be better if you've never had any interaction with them - because they've been warped and changed to the extent that they're not recognizable. Most of my friends who don't even have a passing recognition of either world can read this without any confusion. And thank god, there isn't any Japanese in this. Well, there's this one character who likes sushi bought in supermarkets, but that's a little different.

**Kaleidoscope**

Severus Snape was a man with a long, hooked nose, sallow skin and hair that could do with a rinse.

"I still see your ghost," he whispered to nobody.

There seemed to be a strange gasp ready to leave his lips and his pupils were dilated, vacant. His hands shook and his jaw clenched. An errant black boot extended from a stained cloak and pushed the large pewter cauldron he had been brewing in several inches further from him.

It was an exercise in pointlessness - there were no more fumes and he had pulled the majority of them into his lungs already. The particles were undoubtedly shooting through his bloodstream - he already felt the hallucinogenic effects begin to take hold of him.

Severus watched the years fly by in his mind, quite literally, as sheer nonsense made a strange sort of sense. _He put both feet on the ground and walked on_. He pulled himself out into sitting position. _"Gone, Dumbledore, gone_._"_ He closed his eyes, hard enough to cause discomfort. _She was there_. His eyes snapped open, incapable of understanding why. _You used to love the legend of Icarus, didn't you, Sev?_ The elongated faces of the scales had fallen to the floor and he could see her eyes in them. _She opened her eyes yet again and they were perfect._

In the most mundane of the objects he worked with, he saw Mikailian angels and the eyes of Nephilim in contrast, in conflict.

_They spun and spun and he was never sure if he was being hypnotized or not before he learned the arts of the Mind._

In the silver scales he saw red and black, a circle iris surrounded by a piece of an unnamed fractal that governed _everything_ in the world.

_He saw the Kaleidoscope_.

**Watch the Clouds Fall from the Sky**

His name was Harry Potter, of course. His aunt, who he was sure he had loved at one point, made it a point to spit it out. His first name was as common as that of Tom Middleton's and Dick Campbell's. His father had been a no-good drunk - his uncle was the good kind, of course - who had gotten his mother killed in a car crash. It was a graphic car crash and it seemed to get more graphic each time he asked about it.

By the time he was seven, shards of glass had been pulled out of his body and twisted pieces of metal were coming out of his mother's ears.

Of course, that meant that they probably didn't die in a car crash. Aunt Petunia spoke with such vitriol that Harry thought she might have actually kidnapped him to spite his mother, but in his heart of hearts he knew that she was far too straightlaced to do anything that would carry a long prison for her. Uncle Vernon cheated on his taxes, but it certainly wouldn't put her in jeopardy.

Harry slept in a room that wasn't quite a room. It was small, easy to lock with a deadbolt, and filled with spiders jumping here and there. When he was a young child, he'd find creative ways to ensure that he'd be able to kill them. His personal favorite was using his pencil as a dart to skewer them in mid-air. He was far more accurate with it than he had any right to be. As he grew, however, he learned that spiders, too, were living things and they had the quiet misfortune of being born as eight-legged things that the rulers of the universe as he knew it hated.

Yet that was the first sign that there was something not quite right about him, other than the off-handed mutterings of "fucking freak" that peppered Vernon's speech when he spoke to himself. His uncle had a rather off-putting way of speaking that Harry knew wasn't the norm. His teachers spoke to him politely and called him by his first name, while Vernon just growled "boy" whether the large man was happy, sad, somewhere in between or livid. Vernon always spoke to himself instead of Harry after addressing the child who lived under the cupboard and cooked the bacon in the morning.

"I'm so glad the NHS is footing the bill for his damn healthcare."

Aunt Petunia enjoyed nodding sympathetically.

Dudley nodded along with her.

Dudley was his cousin, though he looked more like a baby whale at the moment. Uncle Vernon may have been overly obese, but the man looked hearty (and rather Irish, though the one time Harry said it to his face, he had been picked up by the collar and shouted at for nearly two minutes) and, dare he say healthy.

Dudley was hilariously fat. He had a habit of leering at scantily dressed girls between his age and twice that which he picked up from his father which Aunt Petunia turned a very forceful blind eye to.

Harry tried (he really did!) to leer along with Dudley, but the few times Aunt Petunia saw him, he had been smacked in the face and had to suffer Dudley's smirk for the rest of the afternoon. Harry grew up rather respectful of everything but authority.

While he wasn't locked in his room, cooking bacon or suffering on long trips to places that none of the Dursleys enjoyed but went to anyway, he was in the garden. Aunt Petunia had him weeding from a reasonable age. She taught him how to plant marigolds on his eighth birthday, and now he did nearly everything in the garden but the planting of marigolds, since two or three of them had turned lurid shades of neon green and blue when he had done it the first time.

There were a large amount of garden snakes which he enjoyed the company of. He had always loved them because they told were the daily confirmation that he was, in fact, special.

They spoke to him.

In fact, one was speaking to him right now.

"_When I grow larger, I will have the ssssstrength to crush a million mice_."

"_Whatever you say, buddy_," Harry replied as he pulled another weed from the ground.

"_I will bite a wissssard and all of their kind will fear me_."

"_Whatever you sssssay, buddy_," Harry repeated with an annoyed hiss.

"_I will join the Dark Lord and purge of the world of those who don't resssssspect ssssssnakes_."

Harry cocked his head and stared at the snake, nonplussed.

"_He will rise from the ashesssss like Quetzalcoatal and take the world by sssssstorm._"

Harry sighed. "_Have you been eating the milk thissssstle again? That'ssssss not very healthy._" It was a running joke in the garden - Harry had pulled some out of the ground and after a snake ate it, it grew gills. Harry threw it into glass of water and at first opportunity, he dumped it into a nearby stream. He never saw the snake again.

"_I want gillssssss too_."

Despite multiple requests, Harry could not recreate his feat.

"_You are far better at magic than you believe_," the snake said as earnestly as a snake could. "_That'ssssss all there is to it_."

Harry shook his head and smiled, pulled out the last noticeable weed and walked back into the house, taking care to open the door quietly. Against her better judgment, Aunt Petunia had left her keys on the kitchen table every night to ensure that she didn't have to wake up before he did. He often snuck out of the house early in the morning to talk to the snakes in the garden because each one of the Dursley slept quite deeply and could only be roused by the smell of his cooking.

It was a bad life. He did well in school, he was friendly with every teacher who met him and did homework for nearly everyone who requested it from him as long as they had some modicum of respect for him. No matter how many times he was punched, kicked, grabbed or choked, he wouldn't do Dudley's unless the other boy said "please" and Dudley learned quickly that asking nicely was far easier and left more time for him to play that damn game with aliens and missiles that most certainly rotted his brain beyond repair.

He'd grow up, go to a prestigious university by way of scholarship and become something that made an impact on the world, rather than a drill salesman. He sighed, prepared the ingredients for the next breakfast on the counter, sat quietly in the high-backed kitchen chair and dozed off for several minutes before he shook himself awake to meet the mailman at the door.

"Hullo, Harry!"

It always paid to be kind to everyone. They always had quite the interesting stories to tell.

"There's a lett-uh for you today, Mr. H. Potter," Mr. Stuart said, beaming as he read the finely penned green ink on a piece of parchment that certainly cost more than a month of Harry's pocket money.

Harry frowned in confusion. His grades were top-notched. There would be no reason for a letter other than an invitation to… dare he dream? Had he been one those lucky individuals selected rather randomly, based on merit, to some boy's school in the idyllic countryside?

"Thank you," he said rather enthusiastically and laid the rest of the mail (the _Telegraph_, two or three bank statements as well as an official looking letter from some business that preyed on stupid middle managers) on a table and closed the door.

Harry ripped the letter open and his heart nearly stopped.

_Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry_.

"Oh."

He decided to read the rest of the letter in a less heated moment, when he could think about the implications properly and threw it into his cupboard, then walked briskly into the kitchen. He burned an egg, which he hadn't done for years, and took extra care to ensure the bacon was crispy and decidedly unburnt.

The Dursleys stumbled into the kitchen, one by one. Aunt Petunia came first and helped set the table, as usual. Uncle Vernon lumbered down and grabbed the neatly laid newspaper and sat down. As he was three pages in, and had begun to mumble about stupid liberals, like clockwork, Dudley crashed through the door and grabbed his mother's plate, shoveling her bacon onto his and then inhaled the eggs rather neatly, somehow.

"Go get the mail, Dudley."

"Make Harry get it."

"Boy."

Harry reached over to the countertop, picking up two bank statements, a business letter and no letters of acceptance from any schools of witchcraft and wizardry, laying it next to Vernon's plate.

The newspaper was set aside.

"Stocks are doing well."

Aunt Petunia and Harry nodded along. Dudley ignored his father.

He opened another bank statement.

"Still paying good interest."

Two nods. Still nothing from Dudley.

"Dinner in London on Saturday!" Vernon beamed.

Aunt Petunia and Harry smiled placidly. Dudley looked up sharply at the mention of dinner.

"Boy."

No words were said, but Harry understood. He was not to leave the house. He was not to do anything unnatural. He would cook a late night snack consisting of a pair of heart attacks for Uncle Vernon and Dudley and a single leaf of lettuce for Petunia. Dudley glanced at him sharply for a moment and Harry nodded absentmindedly at him. Yes, he would find time for Dudley's homework and not play Space Alien Missile Invader Shoot Score or whatever the game was called.

Harry nodded and walked back to his cupboard and closed the door, then began to read the letter.

"Now where do I get _these_ things?" he muttered to himself as he stared at neatly printed green ink which assured him that he would need a wand, scales, books written by authors with ridiculous pseudonyms and that he mustn't bring a broom along.

That was when all hell broke loose.

"Why the _fuck_ is there an _owl_ in here?" Vernon howled. Harry threw his letter on his bed and threw open the cupboard door, then ran into the kitchen.

Vernon was trying to stab the owl with a large meat cleaver. Petunia was chalk white and Dudley was chortling.

Petunia grabbed the letter the owl dropped onto the kitchen table and tore it open quickly as the owl made an exodus through a newly broken window over the sink. Vernon chucked the meat cleaver at it and managed to do nothing but bury the weighted knife into the counter.

"This letter was sent because we realize that you would not be capable of helping Harry procure his supplies. As he has already received his letter with instructions as to what he will be need, enclosed are direc-"

"Just one moment," Vernon roared so loudly that the unbroken windows shook. "Received his letter?"

Vernon had not been quite as angry with Harry since the marigold incident three years ago.

He stormed past Harry and into the hall. Coming to his sense, Harry dashed after him, determined to ensure the large man did not get his hands on the most precious thing he had ever received.

It was too late. The letter had been torn to pieces.

"You!" Harry whispered, unable to process what had just happened.

"Boy!" Vernon responded, his face purpling in anger.

"You tore up the _letter_," Harry finished with a hiss.

"Boy!" Vernon shouted back.

The stairs shook from his anger.

No, not from Vernon's anger. From Harry's anger. Harry was causing this. If either of them had been paying attention, they would have noticed the telltale sound of breaking wood as hairline cracks formed all over the bannister, steps and the door to Harry's cupboard.

"You. Tore. Up. The. _Letter_." Harry pronounced each syllable carefully. His vision had turned red in anger and the world had slowed by a fraction. He saw every vein on Vernon's neck, in his hands, on his face, an off-blue glow around the man he instinctively knew representing the larger man's lifeforce. But he didn't care.

Vernon's eyes widened at he locked himself into a staring contest with Harry. "D-demon," he whispered. "Witches." He clutched the cross that hung around his neck with such force that his knuckles turned white. The glow around him strengthened.

_He believes that will protect him from me_, an insidious voice whispered in Harry's ears.

Then it was harsher. _He knows. He's always known_.

Petunia ran into the hall, followed by Dudley and took one look at his face then screamed. She dropped to the ground and cradled herself in fetal position. "N-no Lily, don't hurt me anymore," she whispered to nobody, rocking back and forth.

Dudley's eyes widened at he decided to solve the problem with a tried and true method - punching it in the face. Harry watched the telegraphed motion carry through and ducked under the slow but strong fist. It slammed into the mirror next to him, sending shards of glass into the boy's hand.

Harry stared into the shards that lined the ground and reflected back at him were a million blood red eyes with single, slowly spinning black commas. The stairs had finally taken enough stress in its lifetime and with a loud rumble, collapsed.

Harry ran and didn't look back.

He had seen something terrible, yet beautiful, and it resided in his eyes.


	2. Blood Red

Penned before a trip to a hookah lounge. Will probably finish afterwards.

**Kaleidoscope**

Albus Dumbledore was a man who was once a greater man.

"The old are but a shadow of their youth."

Still his words were precise and perfect, influential and with a sense of emphatic cadence that exuded his leadership.

It had never been the same since the Duel.

He pulled himself out of the high-backed wooden chair, far more uncomfortable than nearly anything that anyone in a position of power sat in, and straightened his midnight blue robes embossed with golden stars and walked over to a large, dusty cabinet.

He opened it with the wave of his hand and a basin full of silver liquid floated out.

He dipped a finger onto it and an exaggerated ripple bloomed from his fingertip.

He tapped his wand against his temple and a silver strand, a touch more iridescent that the liquid in the Pensieve in front of him curled itself around the tip of the wand.

Dumbledore siphoned the memory into the Pensieve and, with much regret, relived the moment when the world stopped.

**Roll With the Changes**

When he calmed down slightly, his vision turned back to normal and he was breathing heavily. He was nearly twenty long streets away from Privet Drive, with no intention to go back.

Harry sat on a curb, staring at the sun.

He loved magic. He loved being special. But he was safe at home, he could say that his cupboard under the stairs was his piece of the world that his family never approached. The spiders belonged to him, and he had killed all of them without a doubt.

Ending the life of a living thing didn't faze him quite as much as he thought - he thought he had grown beyond that. They weren't out to hurt him. No one was truly out to hurt him - they were scared of the things they didn't understand, so they speared them with pens, words, bullets, you name it.

But Vernon had been out to hurt him. He clearly knew about what this place was. Judging from his Aunt's reaction, his mother had been the same sort as him.

They were going to take him away, but Vernon had truly hated them so much that he wouldn't even provide them with this service.

He was resolved. He would use magic to protect himself, protect his letters, protect what was important to him.

Harry walked into a coffee shop and borrowed a pen from a woman sitting alone, then began to jot down everything he had ever done on a piece of paper.

He had grown gills on a snake. He had turned his writing utensils into homing skewers. He had grabbed things out of his reach. He had grown his hair out longer…

He quickly grabbed several more napkins and spent the rest of the afternoon grinning at the cashier and writing.

He finally got to his eyes. The sharp burning sensation he felt and how the world slowed. How he could see what could only be someone's lifeforce. How they seemed to slow everything down until he could perform superhuman calculations with his mind when it came to motion. How he read Dudley's intent as soon as the other boy had moved.

He thought back to the annoying snake from the morning, which seemed so very far away, though it had only been several hours.

_You are far better at magic than you believe. That's all there is to it._

He wrote that down too.

Before his eyes had changed, he had always felt his magic as something within him, but now it was far more pronounced. He knew where it was, he could feel it leaving his core and powering everything - his motion, his sight, his hearing, his touch, _everything_.

There was a rhythm of some sort to the way it left him and he tried to use the meager knowledge from music classes in school to figure out what it was, but he was unsuccessful.

He stuffed the napkins into his pocket and walked out of the coffee shop. He aimlessly wandered around until he saw an abandoned playground with a funhouse mirror.

He approached it slowly and let all his magic flow upwards until it reached his eyes and _willed_ them to change.

Nothing.

He breathed deeply, slightly angry at himself for failing.

_Anger?_

He thought about the torn letter, about the lost opportunities.

Nothing.

The anger drained away and he felt like crying. It was clearly more potent than whatever he had done before - he couldn't shake the feeling that there was something in his eyes that let him do _more_. But now it was gone and he couldn't use it. It was just like the gills, an impossible-

The world shifted into critical focus and a red glaze entered his vision.

He looked into the funhouse mirror and watched the way the rays of light refracted off of it, bouncing this way and that.

He saw bits and pieces of the intention behind it. The mirror was made to make kids happy. But he saw more. He saw kids hitting their heads on it. A young girl screaming because her long reflection scared her. A faceless worker whose wife had just died screwing it into place with a drill when the playground was built.

Panicked, he willed the vision to recede and it did.

But the pain didn't. He may not have felt it, but he remembered hitting his head. He remembered the abject fear of seeing himself in a way that he had never seen before. He remembered the light of his life _dying_.

He remembered he spinning black commas in the pool of blood red that told him the stark truth of things.

And they scared him, but they entranced him more. This was powerful. This was magical.

He didn't enjoy the pain of others, but something bloomed in him, something that wanted to know. Something that wanted to gaze upon them and connect himself to them.

_Pain was the key._

He thought of the death he had experienced with the worker and the glaze poured over his vision again.

"Son."

Harry didn't need to turn around to know that it was a policeman.

"Where are your parents?"

He was a man trying to do his job. He was concerned that there was a child who seemed to be in a playground without supervision.

Harry turned to him.

"I think I'll be fine for now."

"No you won't. Tell me where your parents are." A command. A little bit of frustration.

Harry turned. He was too far away for the man to be able to see his eyes, but Harry could very easily see the man's.

Harry saw little strands of it leaving the man, saw his emotions as they poured out of his speech, out of his speech.

"_No, I am pretty sure that I will be fine_."

His speech twisted around the other man's and entered the man's ears.

The policeman smiled. "When, then I suppose you will! Don't let me keep you, son!" He walked away merrily.

Harry's eyes widened as he let his the red haze slide away comfortably.

Suddenly the man turned back around, consternation on his face. He marched back over quickly. "I need to find your parents," he insisted.

Harry frowned, letting his vision change again.

The policeman was closer this time and he saw.

"Oh my god." The fear was visible now.

"_There's nothing to see here, officer. You don't see anything abnormal. They're just strangely colored eyes._"

He calmed down immediately. "I need to find your parents."

The strands were looser now, as if the man didn't quite know what he was doing. It was so instinctive to Harry all of a sudden.

"_There's nothing to see here, officer. I am pretty sure that I will be fine_."

The man walked away again, but Harry walked towards him quickly and tapped him on the shoulder.

The policeman turned around.

"_There's nothing to see here, officer. I am pretty sure that I will be fine_."

"Just watching out for the community!" The policeman said jovially and immediately walked out into the street, into the traffic. The strands were now waving in time to the man's emotions, fluctuating this way and that, completely untangled.

The policeman walked into the street.

"No!" Harry shouted in horror, as the policeman walked directly into the path of a car, but the crisis was averted by the attentive driver, who braked immediately and honked very, very loudly.

The policeman stared at the car placidly as the driver unfastened his seatbelt and opened the car door.

"What in the Queen's name-" the man shouted at the policeman.

"Oh, there's nothing to see here. I am pretty sure that I will be fine," the policeman said.

The policeman walked forward yet again into the next lane, but the driver quickly pulled him back.

"Have you _taken_ something?" the man shouted at the policeman, who stared with the same expression throughout the entire proceeding, his strands waving loosely.

Harry walked away quickly.

**The Sound of the Song Would Define Her**

Daphne approached the thought of school with no small amount of dread. She had always been sheltered compared to the children of the families in which she ran with. While they played games and waved practice wands, she, like every Greengrass heir before herself, read the texts that taught her the way of the world.

She felt quite out of place at parties. And she didn't know how to deal with Draco Malfoy.

"… of course I, of all people, would be given the Malfoy tomes at such a young age. My father says that I might be the most magically gifted Malfoy in many, many generations."

Daphne frowned at the groups of children that encircled him as if he were the second coming of Merlin.

"When I arrive at Hogwarts, Harry Potter with be with me or against me."

Daphne frowned more. Harry Potter, the name of the boy whispered about every dinner table in her world, the name of the boy who stood against the greatest threat to their way of life since Grindelwald, the name of the boy who defied Fate and struck a blow against the dark.

Would he be powerful? Her mother had said, once upon a time, that Harry Potter had disappeared, that all the well wishes she sent had never received him. He was behind wards crafted with such skill that Dumbledore must have enlisted help from forces that the old man was aligned with from a more desperate time.

"And if he is against me, I will surpass him in every way."

Neville Longbottom let out a harsh laugh. "Don't fool yourself, Malfoy. Harry Potter was hidden…"

Neville was charismatic, came from a powerful line, and hated the Malfoys on principle.

"He was hidden because he needed to be powerful. My father says that Voldemort isn't gone. He says that Lily Potter did _something_ that night and no one knows what, not even Dumbledore. He says that when Harry Potter arrives, he will be the brightest star in our generation and it'll be a struggle just to get out of his shadow."

"What do you know, Longbottom?" Malfoy spat. "The Potter vaults are sealed, untouched, the Goblins said it themselves. Ollivander hasn't sold a wand to him. No one's seen him but Dumbledore and I'm starting to think that he might not even show for school. He could have died from some strange effects of the Killing Curse."

"Then we best prepare for war, once more," Daphne said quietly. The entire room turned to stare at her and saw a girl that seemed far too old to just be eleven.

There were whispers about her, whispers about her mother. The older woman had been a very skilled witch who had, by obligation to the debts of her family, fought for causes that very few wizards in Britain had ever needed to. One morning, she had left for faraway lands and never returned.

"The Dark Lord will be on the rise again," she finished.

Neville glared. "Call him Voldemort. Fear of a name…" he began, quoting Dumbledore at the trial of Bellatrix Lestrange for the attempted murder of his grandmother, but Malfoy cut him off.

"That's a load of bollocks. He's dead, he's gone and we live in a different world now. This is what Wizarding society would have been like had the great war not occurred and that madman hadn't put my father under the Imperius."

"Putting your father under the Imperius seems pretty counterintuitive to me," Neville said. Everyone laughed and Malfoy's cheeks tinged pink.

"Please, we are here to make friends, friends that will support us through Hogwarts and through the chambers of the Wizengamot," said the soft-spoken Theodore Nott.

That wasn't how Daphne saw it. They were all here, in the sitting room of Bones manor in memoriam of old alliances, friendships that were already made and they were here to make enemies.

Daphne looked from one face to another. Draco Malfoy had the trademark pale face, blond hair and the aristocratic tilt of his chin that reminded Daphne of ferrets. Neville Longbottom had a stocky build with a strong jaw and brown eyes with a sort of stillness to them. Theodore Nott looked like a projection of his voice - soft, intelligent eyes and a frail body. In short, each of them could be recognized for being part of their families by how they looked.

This was true of nearly everyone there. She had the bright blue eyes, the immaculate straight blonde hair and the passive stare. Pansy Parkinson had the pug nose and the deep black hair. They were dominant traits, just like their magic.

Malfoy's glare intensified and Neville's jaw clenched.

In a smooth motion, the former drew his wand. Neville grinned savagely and in the blink of an eye, batted his hand out of the way and drew his own, pointing it at the other's neck.

"Give it up, you're hopelessly outclassed," Neville spat out. "Death. Eater. Scum."

Malfoy gave a roar of fury and mirrored Neville's earlier motion, opting to also kick the larger boy in the chest. "Reducto!" he cried, snapping his wand in imitation of his father. It only worked too well. The bright red spell formed on the edge of the hawthorne wand and built, then released.

Daphne drew her own wand and blasted Neville out of the way. "Your enemy is me, _Draco_."

Malfoy snarled, but Daphne's wand, Oak and Phoenix Feather had drawn a curve in the air. She didn't know any real spells, but she had been coached on all of the wand motions. She just forced magic through her wand and the magic responded. It was beautiful, it was exhilarating. It was an extremely bad time to be Draco Malfoy.

The air shimmered in its displacement as an unseen force picked up Malfoy and threw him across the room and slammed him against the wall with a sickening crack.

He returned fire with a deeper red disarming charm.

Daphne ducked and repeated the motion but this time it just pushed him against the wall.

Draco's face twisted into a sneer as he brought his wand up. The sneer grew into a smirk. "Avada Kedavra!" he cried.

Daphne froze, unwilling to believe he would be that stupid and a pitifully small jet of green light left his wand, going wide. It hit a table and did absolutely nothing.

Everyone stared contemptuously at him and Susan Bones found her courage. "Get out, Draco Malfoy. You are no l-longer welcome in my home," she declared.

A long tunnel formed between the walls and for the third time, magic picked Malfoy up and threw him out of the manor through the chute.

"What a bloody idiot," Neville groaned from the side. Theodore Nott simply looked pensive.


	3. Two Feet

I'm on a roll (in terms of writing this), despite being in my college dorm and partying it up. lolololol. This is really funny to me. I thought I'd quit fanfiction after getting here but it keeps calling my name xD

Penned while bumping Adderall. Not so fun stuff. Watch for the grammar please?

Note: (October 4th, 2012): www. fanfiction dot net/ forum /A-Split-in-Time-and-Space/119550/ - forum to discuss things! Yay!

**Kaleidoscope**

"You're telling me that the last legacy of my two best friends in this world… is gone."

Albus Dumbledore looked Remus Lupin square in the eye and nodded. There was steel in this man now, the man who had seen, and had finally remembered that he had seen the horrors of Time itself falling to its knees, had finally remembered that once upon a time, he was struck by the lightning of Good, of Justice, of everything that was right in the world.

Lupin had lied. James Potter was not his best friend - Sirius Black was. Lily was not a friend as much as the only person he truly answered to. They were going to change the world, all those years ago, a group of boys and girls standing around someone who had seen the horror too and stood for them when they were weak.

There were two kinds of people who had known Lily Evans. There were acquaintances, like her husband James, her mentor Filius Flitwick and Headmaster Dumbledore, who knew of all her machinations but chose to nurture her talent rather than destroy it. The old man had hung doom over her had she ever hurt any of his pupils, but in the end, she was the only one anyway. She had learned how to weave word and do deeds that would make a lesser human sick, to do it for greater things, For the Greater Good.

Lupin's thoughts spun.

A beautiful woman, with a flowing red mane, a shapely face that most referred to as beautiful and bottle green eyes that could see into your soul - that was Lily Evans. Every little motion you made, every twitch of the lip, or widening pore was read with perfect clarity, and , at a moment's notice, could be used against you. She had learned how to see into souls from the knees of Albus Dumbledore, his successor, the only one with enough talent and youth to change the world.

And ultimately, he, Severus, Narcissa, _Sirius_ they had all joined her. They were sick, sick of the way the world turned. And some nights, he thought he was the only one who was still sick. Severus lived for his potions, Narcissa for her son, Sirius… Sirius was a murderer.

She had chosen James Potter to bear her child, for something that he really didn't understand or know. She would never had hurt him, he maintained…

"Remus. Now is not the time for idle daydreams."

"What would you have me do?"

Dumbledore's eyes had never left his, but they had widened in intensity and pinned him into the comfortable couch that sat in sharp contrast to the simple wooden piece that the old man had probably conjured without a second thought and had sat in for fifty years.

"Find. Harry. Potter."

Remus could only nod.

**Watch the World Turn**

It had been two long weeks of scrounging for food and practicing magic on an empty stomach. He had this energy, this energy beneath his feet that he couldn't explain, that got him through each day of taking scraps from trash bins and throwing broken pencils like darts.

Harry had spoken to snakes, intent on milking them for information, but they weren't very helpful about giving him pointers on how to do magic. He had, however, learned that there was a man named Salazar, who lived quite a while in the past, and he was undoubtedly descended from the man if he could speak the Tongue and possessed the Eyes.

They called it the Kaleidoscope and they mocked him for having such a bastardized, weak type of it.

But they told him that it could be powerful, one day. It took more magic than he had, and something about unspeakably heinous acts.

But he also learned that there were other wizards and that not all magic was good. He was cautioned.

He learned that they could make things float and fly, that they could disappear and reappear elsewhere, that they could turn a snake into an inanimate object, read minds, kill people with two dreaded words…

He learned that there was one man who kept them all safe, in the stronghold of their greatest enemy. He was the Bumblebee, who floated lazily in times of peace and stung to kill in times of war.

He was determined to find them, to find other wizards, to find the Bumblebee, to learn about Salazar. He was determined to find the greatest enemy of the wizards and understand why.

He was Harry Potter and he was going to be a powerful wizard.

**Teenage Queen with a Loaded Gun**

She was precocious, she knew it. She was pretty, especially after her parents had fixed her buckteeth and she conditioned her hair.

She was Hermione Granger and she would be the most insufferable know-it-all at Hogwarts. And everyone would love her for it, just like everyone loved her at school.

"Quiz me, mom!"

"Very well, Hermione," Mrs. Granger sighed and opened to a random page of _A Thousand and One Magical Herbs_.

After several minutes of getting every question right, Hermione grew impatient and plopped down next to her mother. "Do you know that the Headmaster of my school is Albus Dumbledore?" she whispered conspiratorially.

Mrs. Granger gave an indulgent smile. "You might have mentioned it once or twice."

"And I'm going to be in the same year as Harry Potter! _Harry Potter_!" Hermione frowned at the confused look on Mrs. Granger's face. "He's supposed to have enough power to take on any dark wizard and _win_. He's going to be light years ahead of us because he's been killing dragons since he was seven! He's going to teach us a lot of very powerful magic because he's kind and generous! He's a true Gryffindor and we're going to be best friends," she promised earnestly.

Mrs. Granger chuckled lightly and wondered if Hermione had been reading too many fantasy novels.

"And everyone's going to be my friend because I'm going to study with them and then we're going to have sleepovers and everyone's going to send me mail because they miss me and I'm going to be really happy!"

Privately, Mrs. Granger hoped that Hermione grew out of this phase. Against her better judgment, she had performed a surgery on Hermione because she was being laughed at in school and her quiet bookworm had come out of the cocoon as a social butterfly. Hermione had yet to learn that the world wasn't just about making friends who said nice things to you and learning in school.

Mrs. Granger frowned. She had known girls like Hermione when she was younger. They were friends with everyone, they were good at school and they had boys chasing after them from the tender age of thirteen. Invariably, they were successful, but one day, they discovered that the world was a lonely place. All of their friends drifted off and their success became a statistic.

She shook herself from morbid thoughts and smiled again.

"Now, tell me about Belladonna, Hermione."

"Belladonna is known as Nightshade, Death's Herb, Dwale and Witch's Berry. The official name is Atropa, and it is part of our standard potionsmaking kit. Horace Slughorn believes that it's useful in far more than just our everyday Sleeping potions because of its arithmantic properties and he's dedicated a portion of his professional research during his time at Hogwarts to studying it. The studies are kept in archives at the Department of Mysteries, but they're low clearance, so a Hogwarts graduate would have access to them provided they got a pass."

Mrs. Granger nodded absentmindedly. There was once a time when she was this excited about dentistry. She put the book down.

"Hermione, I need to talk to you."

"Silly mom, you're already-" Hermione looked up and saw the serious expression on her mother's face.

"Hermione…"

They sat in silence for several minutes as Mrs. Granger collected her thoughts. Hermione looked at the plaques and medals that hung all over the walls, half of which belonged to her mother and half to her father.

"Hermione. You are going to be leaving us until Christmas."

She nodded. This was obvious, but there was something about her mom's tone that made her pause and hold still.

"This is the school, according to all the books you bought, for the most talented of magicians-"

"Wizards and witches."

"Yes, wizards and witches in your generation. I read the literature. Magic is far more common in families that have had them for generations. I wouldn't be surprised if it latched itself onto some gene or another. They've been hidden from our world for five hundred years and before that, we hear stories about witch hunts which might have even been true."

Hermione nodded along, thinking carefully.

Mrs. Granger took a deep breath. "Their culture is bound to be quite different from ours. They can fix their problems with a wave of their wand, they can get places by grabbing you by the arm and disappearing-"

"Disapparating", Hermione corrected, though she wish she didn't.

"Yes. Disapparating. This means that the problems they have will also be… larger in magnitude. I wouldn't be surprised if you could do wonderful things with Magic, but even as we plebians," Hermione smiled at this, "do strange and wonderful things with science, we have done terrible things. Magic is something that is an unknown to me and even with all your reading, it is unknown to you. We are, at the core, immigrants to a culture that we don't understand. They might not like us much, there might be some trials for you that would end in embarrassment for a foreigner to this country that will end in you getting hurt."

Hermione opened her mouth to protest but her mother waved her hand.

"Be very careful who you make friends with. Don't let people see you as an oddity or use you. You're a smart girl and I'm sure that's not because of magic. I am, after all, quite smart too." They exchanged giggles. "Make friends who you know have good hearts and stick with them. It doesn't matter if not everyone likes you."

Hermione didn't speak after that and Mrs. Granger went back to quizzing her on plants and fungi that neither of them had ever seen.

**Let Me Fly, I Need a Release**

"I am very disappointed in you, Draco."

Had his father said it, he would have been very, very upset. He might have even teared up.

But his mother had said it. He did tear up.

"Mum."

"What possessed you… to cast a Killing Curse at a _Greengrass_ in the ancestral manor of a family not aligned with ours?" Lucius Malfoy growled. "Now your mother is upset," he added as an afterthought, though everyone in the room knew that the fact of Narcissa's disappointment was what really made the man angry.

"Father," Draco said stiffly.

Lucius, a mirror image of his son in thirty years, poured a glass of firewhiskey for himself and downed it in a gulp.

Draco almost groaned. Now he was going to get it.

"You… are a _disgrace_," Lucius spat, slamming his silver cane into a chair and splintering the heirloom. The emerald eyes on the snake which sat at the head of the cane glinted by light of the fireplace in the sitting room.

"Easy, Lucius." His father calmed slightly and gently grasped Narcissa's hand.

"Your wand, Draco."

"Father?"

"You… are to use a practice wand until school begins. You will not leave the grounds of the manor. You have proven yourself to be entirely incapable of the responsibility of possessing a _wand_." Lucius finished with a shout.

Draco looked as if he were to protest, but he handed his wand to his father, nodded shortly and left the sitting room.

Narcissa looked to Lucius. "You wouldn't have taken the wand had he refused."

Lucius nodded. "He has too much courage amongst those he believes he is superior to. He needs to learn how to stand in the face of adversity. It is my hope that he would respond with some semblance of manhood."

Narcissa raised a delicate eyebrow at her husband and he sat in shamed silence.

"I wasn't going to let him kill you."

Narcissa's face twisted into a scowl. "Voldemort could not have killed me. Not easily. It would not have been worth the effort. We could have gone to Dumbledore."

"And traded one master who believed what we did for one who didn't?"

At this, Narcissa bit her tongue, but Lucius wasn't done.

"I would do anything for my family, Narcissa. Anything. I would lie, cheat, steal, drag my name through the mud, if it meant that I could save you and Draco from being hurt."

"You let that man into our home. You cursed me from behind."

"There was nothing I could do!"

Narcissa stared into her husband's eyes. "What really happened that night?"

Lucius turned away. "Why now, Narcissa?"

"Our son, he is ready to head off into the world, to do things that will make our family proud. The Malfoys, we are built on love and lies. It is time for the lies to stop."

"There's something more."

"Yes, there is. But that's a story for another day. In the space of this year, we will truly become a family, just as we wanted when you courted me."

Lucius chuckled out of some sort of relief, some sort of lifted weight from his shoulder as he suddenly launched himself into a story.

"I'd never forget the words he said to me. 'Tell me, how does it feel to grovel before that mongrel, begging for the life of a woman you don't know better than as a quick study in shagging?'. That was my father, Abraxas Malfoy."

Narcissa frowned, but didn't interrupt.

"I told him that I loved you, that Tom would come for you. He was still Tom, then. My father, for the first time in my life, had spoke more than single syllables to me. Why do you think I coddle Draco?"

Narcissa nodded, but the frown didn't leave her face.

"'Do you know how our family got its name?' he asked me. I didn't. I had only read about the greatest exploits of our ancestors. I didn't know our dark history, why we are hated and feared by the commonfolk and treated warily by the strong. 'Malfoy, French for bad faith. One of my less illustrious ancestors had left King William the Second on the ground after firing an arrow into his neck. Not only did he betray his liege lord, whom he had pledged his life, his lady and his firstborn to, he didn't even do a good job of killing him.' My world had crashed down upon me. My father knew."

Narcissa's expression became alarmed.

"He knew I had poisoned him. I tried to lie." Lucius steepled his fingers. "He told me that it was unbecoming of a pureblood scion. And then, he told me his life story."

She stared at him expectantly.

"I told him that if Tom could have his life, you would never be harmed. That was the first time Tom had ever lied to me, and in my youthful arrogance, I couldn't accept that it was my father who had easily discovered it. His voice, do you remember it?"

Narcissa thought back to the gravelly tones, the sheer power and magic that the old man didn't use purposefully - he had eclipsed so very many in power that his voice could bring a Wizengamot chamber to their knees had he chosen. He was the scariest man she had ever met and she had looked the Lord Voldemort in the eye. So when Lucius spoke, she heard the the voice of Abraxas Malfoy again.

"'Myself, and my compatriots. We… we were the greatest generation. Before the lies, before the deceit, and, perhaps, after them too. After Albus and his grand theory of the Greater Good. We fought Gellert Grindelwald, the greatest Dark Wizard to ever live.' But that wasn't the important bit. It was my reaction to what he had said afterwards."

Narcissa stared.

"I still haven't learned the lesson he had tried to impart. My hatred for muggles and the mudbloods still runs deep. It runs through both lines, with my mother. I still feel irrationally that they pollute our culture, they take our women, they make our lives hell, despite what happened. And I told my father that."

Narcissa's lip twitched upwards in displeasure.

"'Enough, Lucius. I am teaching you my last lesson today'. And he did. He told me to forget the newest incarnation of the Dark Lord and that the Dark Lord did not know true power. My father confessed to me that he never possessed the ability to cast a single unforgivable, yet he was the most powerful duelist bar Dumbledore that I had known. He begged me to leave the services of my Lord. But then… he told me that you weren't worth my humanity."

Narcissa nodded quietly. "I wasn't worth it, Lucius. I wasn't."

Lucius was caught between despair and a scowl. "You don't understand, Narcissa. You were, you are… everything to me. My father never loved anything but justice. He wouldn't know. He cast a spell that day, to invoke a brotherhood he had formed with Edgar Bones and Everett Weasley. They summoned Dumbledore by way of phoenix song, pinned me to the wall while mortally poisoned and they rode to meet the Dark Lord."

"The Darkest Night," Narcissa cried out, finally understanding.

"Yes. That was the Darkest Night, when Tom became Voldemort and was burned to a crisp at the end of my father's wand at the cost of the lives of three men who had stood against the iron fist of Gellert Grindelwald. It was fought over a single woman. And I have no regrets."

"As to Draco?"

They did not speak.


	4. The Castle

Still on that roll.

Okay, not quite on the roll anymore. To be honest, more than half of this was penned immediately following the last chapter. Then life happened. Boo. Who needs real life?

Please correct my shit. Beggin' you and all.

Note: (October 4th, 2012): www. fanfiction dot net/ forum /A-Split-in-Time-and-Space/119550/ - forum to discuss things! Yay!

**Kaleidoscope**

It was a dreary cell, made more dreary by the guards. Once, he had dreamed of escaping, of revolution, of bright and beautiful things, but now all he could think of was the fact that Lily Potter had died with James, that he had left his godson with the worst sort of muggles.

Yet he could still think. The spark of his intelligence burned bright. The Dementors never took your knowledge of the world away from you. They could not touch the revelation, could not harm his resolve. When he left this bleak island and forced nutrition into his body, he would be Sirius Black again. Now, he was just a shell.

He became Padfoot for a moment.

They couldn't touch Padfoot either. Padfoot was a dog, his dog, his best friend in this lonely cell.

Being an Animagus was a blessing like no other, he had decided all those years ago while listening to his mad cousin Bella howl at the walls and seeing her husband's dead eyes through the walls.

One day, he would fulfill his promises. But today, he would be a dog, a dog who dreamed of the past.

**Stand Up**

Harry stood on a rooftop after managing to successfully teleport himself there and watched the world unfold beneath him. He was in a terrible district of London. There were girls who were fifteen baring their bodies at strangers and men with too many tattoos and piercings who walked around with knifes in hand. Blue-collar workers pointed their chins towards their chests and stepped with haste and urgency to get back home.

It was night - he would not use magic around those who were nonmagical during the day. One policeman with his mind altered beyond recognition was enough collateral damage.

He ran through the themes of magic in his mind. He would be strong if he wanted to be. He could always get stronger. He thought of the pain around him and the glaze slipped over his eyes once more, slowing the world. Nearby the door to a club open, letting out music and lost minds fiending for hits. A butterfly flapped its wings, creating such a slight current of wind it could do nothing. A roach crawled over a dumpster, the same dumpster he had emptied of salvageable foodstuffs.

And one man was looking straight at him.

The man had brown hair and a general sense of unkemptness. He did not take good care of his body, that was apparent. He was dressed in what used to be robes of sorts, but they looked to be rags wrapped about his body now.

As their gazes met, he deliberately pulled out what seemed to be a lighter and clicked it once. There was no spark, but in an instant, it had pulled in the light from a street lamp, stealing it. He clicked it again and again until the only light was the sign of the club.

There was a crack, the sound of a teleportation gone wrong and they stood on the rooftop together.

"Harry."

To say either were alarmed was an understatement. There was a look that was equally searching, determined and broken in the older man's eyes. He wasn't quite shaved, though he certainly didn't smell of anything untoward. Harry thanked the world for small miracles.

"Who are you?" He was a bit more rude than intended, but the man had performed feats of magic he had never seen before and appeared besides him.

The man nodded in resignation. He didn't want to go through this introductory phase, not after chasing Harry for so long, but he didn't want to kidnap the child in front of him. "I am Remus Lupin. I am loosely associated with Professor Dumbledore, from the Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry."

Harry nodded, feeling slightly more relaxed.

"We have been watching you for several years. Dumbledore says that you seemed to get along just fine with your relatives. Forgive me for asking, but what happened?"

Harry weighed the consequences of telling his fellow wizard about his problems and decided that being short about it would be better than obfuscating.

His eyes glazed over yet again, though he looked away, the strands of Remus Lupin's speech on the edge of his vision. He would be able to elementarily determine whether or not the man was lying to him and judge his responses. The darkness obscured his face as much as the slight turn of his head.

Remus laughed, long and loud. It was a joyful note, with a touch of reminiscence. "Oh, you've certainly got your mother's eyes, then."

Harry frowned, but didn't turn back.

"She used to do the same. She thought it'd scare us, but there are far worse things in the world than oddly colored pupils."

Harry turned to him sharply, the black commas spinning rapidly.

"Yes, an underdeveloped Kaleidoscope. You have been given a gift, Harry."

"You know what it does, don't you?" he asked, fishing for information.

Lupin shook his head. "I was never privy to Lily's secrets. No living man but Professor Dumbledore could tell you more than you know about them already, and I doubt Lily told him much about them herself. She knew how to keep her secrets better than any of us."

"Us?" Harry queried, feeling as though Lupin didn't quite mean 'all of wizardfolk'.

Lupin nodded, his joy blending in full force with the nostalgia. The strands, so very visible on the non-magical, were muted and insulated by his magic, as well as some strange taint that he hadn't noticed earlier. If he were to attempt escape, it would be impossible for him to influence Lupin's thoughts. "Us. We were seven or eight, with Lily at our helm. She was Dumbledore's pupil, and Flitwick's. We each found our own teachers and we taught each other. We were to be the brightest stars of our generation and each of us has given up on the dream or died." The strands were more visible now, bitter.

"Why are you here?" Harry asked.

Lupin shook his head. "I've given you information you desired. It is time for you to tell me why you left the Dursleys." Harry would have protested, but there was a sort of didacticism to his tone that he had never seen before. The man was trying to teach him something about how wizards interacted with one another. Some sort of equivalence in the exchange of information? He thought back to the snakes, who had been guarded with telling him things. Was it because he didn't have anything to give back?

Harry nodded reluctantly. "I got my Hogwarts letter in the morning while cooking breakfast. I hid the letter. Another letter came, by way of owl, and my uncle tried to kill it. He read the second letter and tore up the first after breaking into my room. I got angry and destroyed the room, then left."

"On your own volition?" Lupin asked, troubled.

"Yes. I told myself that I'd never go back."

Lupin took in his breath sharply. "There were wards around your house, making it impossible for anyone to harm you while you were there. You would be safe at Hogwarts, and you would be safe as long as you called that house your home."

Harry frowned. Lupin was telling the truth. "What would try to harm me?"

Instantly, Lupin was guarded. He had clearly said too much. "It isn't my place to tell you. Would you like to journey to Hogwarts with me, Harry?"

Harry nodded. "I would like to meet Professor Dumbledore," he decided.

Lupin nodded. "A wise choice. There is not a living man in this world that can't learn something from Professor Dumbledore. He has born our standard for fifty years and he has never wavered," he said with something akin to pride. There was another touch of bitterness that Harry didn't understand.

"Finally, how did you find me?"

Lupin looked ready to tell him, then shook his head. "That will be a story for when you know me better, Harry. I was very good friends with both your parents," he said, though Harry could see that those statements were quite unrelated.

"Take my arm, Harry."

He did and he was pulled into the vortex of teleportation with a loud crack. Harry blinked and the haze receded from his vision.

"Welcome to Hogsmeade, Harry. We are currently in Scotland," Lupin said. Harry drank in the scene before him. There were stores and shops selling items that he had never heard of. They were currently in front of a ratty old pub which seemed far more atmospheric than it should have been. With a slight shift in vision, Harry could confirm that there were little swirls of magic which wrapped about the pub, possibly put in place to make it seem more inviting.

"Look lively, Harry," Lupin said, pulling him into the pub quickly. He closed the door behind him and they pushed through the crowd to the bar.

"Remus," said a large man with a huge beard.

"Aberforth," Remus greeted. "Tell Albus that I've arrived with only good tidings."

The now-named Aberforth turned his gaze to Harry. There was a sort of raw intelligence and cunning in it that didn't seem to fit with a simple bartender, but he had to be, after all, a wizard.

Remus dragged him out of the pub and they walked up the road in Hogsmeade. Remus was giving a light history lesson on how Hogsmeade was the only wizarding town in England ("Muggles can't see this place, Harry.").

They slowly walked up a long and winding road until, quite suddenly, a sharp turn on the road occurred and a huge castle appeared before them.

Harry stopped for a moment. It was magnificent, with medieval turrets and strong stone walls. It seemed to buzz and vibrate with magic and after the glaze slid over his eyes, he realized that every single stone had been fundamentally _changed_ in some way.

"It's a beautiful castle, isn't it, Harry?" Remus gazed fondly too, but soon began to walk again. "Magic is… quite versatile."

As they stepped through the gates, which had opened for them once they stood in front, Harry took a good look at the lake and the grounds, as well as the large forest that surrounded the area.

"That's the Forbidden Forest, Harry. You're not supposed to go in there, because there are some hostile species. Several students have died in there over the years."

He nodded.

Remus and Harry strode up to the doors of solid oak and the older man knocked twice. The knocks were deceptively strong, the hard sound of his fist striking the wood resonating through the castle.

"Now, before we go in… take care who you show your eyes to. Severus Snape is safe. Professor Dumbledore is safe. But don't let anyone else know about them. They're a very, very powerful gift and you would be in a fair amount of danger if anyone else found out about-"

The door swung open and a stern looking woman in a tartan nightgown greeted Lupin stiffly, then turned her eyes to Harry in surprise.

"Harry Potter!" she all but shouted, then collected herself nearly instantly. "I am Professor McGonagall. I will be teaching you Transfiguration, which is a branch of magic that deals in changing objects into other objects, from their size and shape to their very properties. I'll lead you to Professor Dumbledore now."

They walked through the corridors teeming with curious ghosts and loud paintings who attempted to ask him questions about nearly everything. Harry ignored them after Lupin mumbled something about the ghosts being shadows of their former personalities and the paintings being even more so, but he told himself that he would spend some time questioning them at a later point.

"Chocolate frogs," McGonagall stated quite clearly to a stone griffin who bowed and turned inwards to reveal a spiral staircase in the middle of a hall.

Harry stared at the griffin, attempting to discern the magic without the assistance of his eyes, feeling for the currents and the lines that he knew were there. _Not much_, he decided, but there was a distinctive spark of something beautiful and subtle behind the functionality of it. It was an old sort of spark, but it lasted, it spoke of strength, of-

"We'll be headed up that staircase now, Harry," Lupin said, pulling on his arm gently. "We'll meet Professor Dumbledore now."


	5. Old Men

How about the next chapter! We get to see Dumbledore for real this time! And more Purebloods! And a bonus right near the front!

Really heavy on magical theory. I hope y'all enjoy it. I'm not quite throwing certain concepts that become "magic" in my story, but the groundwork is there, hopefully. My idea with this is to explore magic with my readers rather than just dumping it in all of you. If it pisses you off, skim it, I guess.

Note: (October 4th, 2012): www. fanfiction dot net/ forum /A-Split-in-Time-and-Space/119550/ - forum to discuss things! Yay!

**Kaleidoscope**

Alchemy. This was the focus of her existence, why her husband hadn't passed like the other mortals into oblivica.

In the cold light of the moon, her lover, her greatest enemy, she carefully transmuted the iron into a pure, beautiful platinum. It was an elementary exercise, but one that she loved all the same. There were principles, old principles in this exercise which fueled her thoughts and changed her mindset about magic every time.

This was true magic, a wizard's magic. It was such a pity. The Mages were so deadly, so powerful, but they simply chose a path that put them at odds with the divinity that lived within them.

Perenelle longed to meet someone who understood. She stopped short at this thought. Nicholas did understand, to a degree, and he was powerful. Kischur understood too, to the same degree, a degree that was militaristic and strong, but incomplete. They appreciated some of the beauty of the magic but simply didn't see the rest.

There was Albus, but he was too concerned with his mortality, too concerned with the unimportant things to shed it.

She drew a mirror into the air in front of her and stared at her reflection. Perhaps it wasn't some greater understanding, but a terrible, terrible vanity.

**Departed…**

"Please leave us," said the man who could only be Professor Dumbledore. He wore half-moon spectacles, extravagant robes that he had either created himself or bought for an extravagant sum of money and he sat in a very uncomfortable chair. His beard reached the edge of the table.

McGonagall nodded shortly and left immediately. Dumbledore raised a bushy brow at Lupin, who suddenly realized that he had meant both of them and quickly descended the spiral staircase.

Dumbledore drew a long stick which hummed with magic, what could have only been a magic wand of some sort. Harry took a step back and felt the red haze slide before his eyes.

"Relax, Harry. I do not mean to harm you."

Of course, Harry didn't move.

"This, Harry, is a wand. It is a tool of the large majority of wizards you will meet in these formative years of your adolescence. It is both a thing of power and a crutch."

Dumbledore waved it at the stuffed sofa opposite of him and it changed slowly into a pig, which started to dance a clumsy jig. Despite himself, Harry smiled. It was a wondrous process. He could see the intention, the perfect control, the lack of any wasted movements in the flick of the Professor's wrist.

"But the wand has its limitations. It can help control some aspects of transfiguration, which I have just shown you. It certainly makes a charm among the easiest branches of magic." It was obvious that he was referring to the fact that the pig had, well, danced for them.

"But in terms of spells that require more brute force, the destructive ones, the truly miraculous ones, a wand gets in the way."

Dumbledore put his wand down and drew his right hand behind his head into a fist. A surge of sheer force grew in the room to the extent that Harry felt his hair stand on end and his eyes screamed at him to leave as soon as possible, preferably through a window. Harry stayed put.

The old man threw the formless, colorless bolt of power that Harry knew only his eyes could see at the pig, immediately changing the beast into a statue of a luminescent metal.

"Silver, Harry. This is alchemy at work." The free magic in the room slowly pulled itself into the pig, changing its nature in a way that he didn't understand. Harry let the red haze recede to examine the statue. There was no difference to his naked eye and he frowned.

"Oh yes. You see it, don't you? Silver has the very, very useful ability to discern the motion of magic in an enclosed space. Alchemized silver, in truth, is pure silver which is missing the free atmospheric magic that naturally formed silver consists of, so it functions as a drain on the unbound magic in a system. We call this Ptolemy's Third Law. Due to the Third Law, Radical-free silver, or newly alchemized silver, can drain all the magic from liquid or gaseous mediums, thus eliminating magical poisons or wards that aren't inscribed into solids."

"Can it block magic from being performed?" Harry spoke for the first time in what felt like hours.

Dumbledore smiled at this. "It can block directed magic, but it is very limited. You'll learn more about the difference in directed magic and passive magic, but it is safe to say that your silver must be created with exponentially more effort than it took to cast the curse or charm directed at you to successfully absorb the attack."

"Curse?"

"A curse is a spell created to harm others. All spells that you will learn in Hogwarts with the obvious exception of self-study is on an arithmantic scale of one to thirteen. Transfigurations are multiples of two and spells are always odd. Curses occupy the space of thirteen."

Harry nodded.

"Now, this is quite enough magical theory for the day," Dumbledore decided. "We must get to discussing less important things that affect you far more importantly."

"The Dursleys," Harry said carefully.

"Yes, we shall discuss them. Since I don't want to hold you here in my office for hours - there will be quite enough time for that during the school year - let's quickly create a list of things we shall discuss. It is, as our non-magical brethren would say, your call, Harry."

"The Dursleys, certainly. I would like to learn a bit more about magic as well," Harry decided. "Particularly about my eyes." He said the last bit with a slight wince. While he didn't trust the man in front of him, the sheer knowledge and power that was at the man's command proved that he could learn something from him. Harry resolved to learn enough to forget the need of others.

"We will discuss all of those things, but I would like to start with the Dursleys."

Dumbledore stood up and paced for a moment, the well-worn habit of a man who had too much on his mind.

"Why did you leave, Harry?"

"They were not the best caretakers. But you probably knew that, if you knew how quickly I had gone." The accusation was sharp on Harry's tongue.

Dumbledore let out a heavy sigh. "I would have taken you into the walls of the castle had I known how it would turn out."

"But you didn't." The accusation grew sharper.

"Tell me, Harry, what do you know of our world?"

"Next to nothing."

Dumbledore chuckled. "Well, I do suppose that is entirely my fault, as in, the blame falls squarely onto my personage. In short, there are factions upon factions in this world who disagree on the pursuit of power. Before the High Statute, we mixed with the nonmagical folk. Just over seven hundred years ago, it was signed and we had gone, in fifteen years, from buying produce, selling cure-alls and practicing in large towers to hiding ourselves away. Our great antagonist at that point was the Church. Over the years, in a long and rich history you will undoubtedly hear from the heirs of our magic, our enemies changed."

Dumbledore took a deep breath. "In short, treaties were made, artifacts changed hands, lives were lost and the honor of both the Light and Darkness defended. Then came Nineteen Forty One. It was the year of terrible things. The scion of Merlin's line was lost to the wand of Gellert Grindelwald, the Church had assassinated two very powerful mages that were allied to us, completely unaware of the consequences and the infighting in our government, the Wizengamot had reached a fever pitch."

Harry nodded along, committing the names and dates to memory.

"So in the space of four years, we forged new alliances, we did battle, and we won. Anticlimatic, but you can read more about it in history books than I am willing to tell you at the moment, Harry. There are some memories that should only be experienced," he finished rather cryptically.

"Yet the battle wasn't done. In the shambles, I was the most powerful representative of our portion of the world, and I had to go through the terrible process of hiding our decimated world from even our former allies. I had to cut away teachers, friends, forget schoolboy rivalries, to lead a nation who hated and feared my achievements as much as they demanded my protection. I declined the highest seat of power in our government in order to teach."

Harry frowned.

"Of course, that only provides context for what would happen next. While I was away fighting a war on multiple fronts, I neglected to see the threat growing in my own school. A young boy had found secrets not meant for him through interactions with his ancestors and his pursuit of deeper and darker magics. He would become the next great power to arise, a homegrown one that I had to deal with, completely without any help. In Nineteen Eighty One, he murdered your parents. He cast the Killing Curse at you and you reacted rather violently, reversing the curse at him and banishing him."

"So he's after my head?"

Dumbledore shook his head. "I do not believe he is constituted enough to pursue you, or even contact anyone with the abilities to breach the defenses of this castle. But inevitably, he will be back. I spent my time ensuring that you didn't fall into the control of the various factions that plague the Wizengamot, or even worse, the factions that plague the larger world."

"Firmly in your control," Harry said distastefully, unable to hold back.

At this, Dumbledore took a little bit of offense, his eyes dimming and lines of anger appearing along his chin. "Well, clearly not, with the mess you made with your relatives."

"Where do we go from here?" Harry asked after a pregnant pause.

"You are free to wander the grounds of the castle and pick up knowledge at least this summer. I have procured your schoolbooks and a small sum of money for you. At some point, I will take you to Diagon Alley to see Mr. Ollivander for a wand."

Harry nodded.

"Do not waste this time, though I highly doubt that would be the case. Now, a final conversation before you need to leave my office and leave an old man to his memories. I will discuss magic with you at other points during the school year. Your eyes."

Harry nodded again.

"Do you feel any drain from prolonged use of them?"

Harry shook his head, confused.

Dumbledore looked verily alarmed. "No drain? No headache, the Root forbid, blood dripping from them?"

"Nothing."

Dumbledore stared into his eyes. "Lily's were a little further along when she was here, though I had only discovered of their existence in her fourth year. The Blood runs Deep, they say."

He drew his wand. "Now, just a quick exercise. He created a similarly shaped stick from thin air and handed it to Harry. Try to mirror my movements."

Dumbledore began with easy swishes and flicks that Harry picked up. The intentions, the next movements, they were simple to him, easy to understand.

Then there were unexpected things, little precise corkscrews, jabs that could have put eyes out, a multitude of emotions that the old man associated with each handling of the wand.

Harry lost the Professor several minutes along and politely put the wand back on the table.

"Imperfect recall relative to the difficulty of the movements. Were you reading intent?"

The sharpness of the man's mind astounded Harry. "Yes. I lost you at the more complex emotions."

Dumbledore nodded. "You, a boy of eleven, who hasn't known true desperation or certain losses of humanity, wouldn't be capable of the divination of certain motions. This can be dangerous. You should try to increase your repertoire of thought. Read some of the more philosophical works and do try to go out into the world more often. You have my permission to explore London when you aren't in class. Do remember that this isn't license to personally commit crimes in order to understand darker natures. There are better ways to experience the divinities of the Darkness than to get your hands on it." His face turned stormy. "I _will_ put you down if you hurt a single one of my students in a manner that isn't justified."

Harry nodded. It was a long leash, but it was a leash nonetheless. He would break free in time, and Dumbledore knew it.

"I cannot police you, and I refuse to do so. I believe that the growth of magic is correspondent to the freedom of the mind. I just sincerely hope you won't take the paths that will make you a monster. I wish to, at some point, tell the world that I was proud to introduce you to the world of magic."

"Is that all, Professor?"

"Yes, that is all. Go forth and set the world on fire, Harry Potter."

**Burn Brighter**

Astrid Greengrass wove magic in far too many ways to count. She was educated at Hogwarts and finished at Clock Tower with the Mage's Association, astonishing her peers and earning herself an honorary spot in the Mage's Council as the final descendant of Merlin, despite being a product of his daughter's line.

Today, she wove magic at a piano, playing through the long chords and resonant cadences of the Baroque era and the sharp, precise clarity of the Classical era.

Daphne knew her mother expressed her emotions through the playing of music and when her mother played Beethoven, it was a response to the hardship of decisionmaking.

The clear, unassisted appregios of the third movement of the Moonlight Sonata rang through the sitting room.

A clear chord strike. Anger.

The struggling _legato_ of the technically difficult chromatisms and the single notes that bloomed into a refrain of the appregiations. Fear.

Her mother didn't fear much.

A last cadence. Finality.

"Daphne."

"Mother?"

"They have asked me to take a position unoccupied since the death of my cousin."

The Cousin. He wasn't a Greengrass, but an Emyrs. The last living Emyrs, a proudly homosexual man in the age of the greatest discrimination, the Nineteen Forties. An American. Daphne's grandfather had never spoken well of the man and her mother had never even known the man, but he had lived for nearly a hundred and twenty years, his face unchanged from the ruggedly handsome and young aristocratic imprint that followed his ancestry.

He had lost his life in a duel with Gellert Grindelwald, as a Primary Color of the Mage's Association. The man's death had catalyzed such a reaction from Albus Dumbledore that the trappings of a politician were lost in an instant.

"They want me to be the Green."

Blue, Green and Red, the three Primary Colors of the Mage's Association. There were legends that surrounded them. The requirements for the job were a nomination and a simple majority, yet the position hadn't been filled for fifty years. In a disastrous battle, all three, and two of the four Great Generals were defeated in tandem on the edge of Gellert Grindelwald's wand. High Flamel had resigned his position and High Zelretch, the remaining Generals, whose accomplishments stretched into a time before the Statute, kept their lives through sheer willpower.

"The expectations are high."

Astrid Greengrass never spoke of obligation, but that only impressed the intensity of the situation upon her daughter.

"Of course, I will leave the dealings of the Wizengamot to your father and take the position."

"You don't have to, mom."

Astrid smiled at the naiveté presented before her. "Oh Daphne. You don't say no to a simple majority of the Mage's Association. Not unless you're Albus Dumbledore."

Daphne nodded, a frown marring her features. "What's so great about Albus Dumbledore anyway?"

At this, Astrid laughed. "Merlin defeated Summer itself. Flamel invented the Philosopher's Stone. Zelretch dropped the moon on the king of Vampires. Dumbledore defeated a monster in a duel."

Astrid played a scale. "The Blue has been nominated as well. She's going to be a fourteen year old girl from the East. I can only imagine how brightly her star will burn."

"And the Red?"

Astrid frowned. "If the Blue is the resident Siegemaster and the Green is the resident Spymaster, the Red is the most powerful fighter and assassin of the Association. The Red's spot is unfilled. I can only think of four possible candidates at the moment, and they all have positions as generals or function as Headmasters in Hogwarts."

Daphne laughed at this and hugged her mother.


	6. Trains

Ermagwerd, I'm writing the next chapter already! This one will have a bit of Harry learning, a bit of the train ride (so we'll see Hogwarts students) and maybe even some other things.

If anyone wants to know what inspires my writing, two bits - the scene break titles are from mostly songs that I love the lyrics to, but when I write, it's generally atmospheric electronic music that convey heavy emotion - trance, dub with hip hop influences, things like that.

So guys, please visit the forum to discuss things! www. fanfiction dot net/ forum /A-Split-in-Time-and-Space/119550/

Check my profile for a hyperlink if you're lazy. xD

In there, you'll get bonus content! And maybe a chance to convince me of how the story should go!

And since I'm promoting this. I'm giving you the next chapter super, super early. I just finished penning it like, two hours ago. I've looked over it once.

**Kaleidoscope**

She was Lorelei of Bartholemoi, the youngest General of the Mage's Association to exist and the sound of her name defined her.

The Bartholemoi were the Protector of the Five Elements, the last of Elijah's line - you were not considered an adult until you parted the Jordan River. Her older sister had died at the age of seven trying to replicate the feat, but she had done it. She had spent twenty years in the Mage's Association skirting a Sealing Designation for her true understanding of what it meant to be one with the elements.

A Sealing Designation. Before she had become a General, it hung as a constant threat against her overperformance. They were given to those who knew magic better than the elders of the Association, something to keep young mages down, to keep them from getting strange ideas. After Gellert Grindelwald had joined them and stole the fifty two tomes of Universal Research, they had begun handing them out like candy.

It was a death sentence. Those who violated them, she struck down personally. But she felt the years of plateauing catch up to her. The Aozaki and their two demonic daughters, Matthew Lenova who was twelve and chanted in the name of Fate, the everpresent threat of the Einzbern, Lady Greengrass's prodigy daughter who didn't forget a single thing she learned…

The storm clouds brewed on the horizon and she functioned as the woman who would blow the hurricane back.

**I Feel Fine**

Harry lived in the guest's quarters as he had not been "Sorted" yet. He assumed that it meant that he had to pass a sort of test to enter the different Houses of Hogwarts.

It was a nice space, with a thicker carpet than he had ever seen before and a four-poster bed all to himself. It was quite a colorful room, with what he learned were Gryffindor Red and Golds, Hufflepuff Yellow and Blacks, Ravenclaw Blue and Greys and Slytherin Green and Silvers.

The bookcase was stocked with historical journals and culturally important books - _The Song of Merlin_, Elijah's _The Elements_, Sweeting's _Horn of the Unicorn_ and other works that would have been considered light, elementary reading by most of those with the right to stay in the guest room. Harry barely left the room, even at mealtimes, due to his need to imbibe the information within the pages. On the second night, he asked Dumbledore for a notebook of sorts, which was immediately provided with the flick of a wand.

Harry's notebook had reached lengths of epic proportions, full of generic note-taking, comments, insights provided by his eyes and the displeasure of not having a wand when Dumbledore pulled him aside on a Monday morning to go to Diagon Alley.

They walked at a comfortable pace as Dumbledore asked Harry about what he had learned in the past two weeks.

"And so my idea on the formation of runic structures is in line with Agrippa's, the whole Note of Resonance and Resonant Branches seems to make the most sense. But I have discovered exceptions. The Egyptians and the Indus seem to operate through multi-note systems, which I think is based on the fact that their polytheism is more abstract and geographically separate."

"Of the three theories, Agrippa is not my favorite, but I do admit that he seems to be quite accurate in his Resonance production. The information isn't quite easy to come by, but there are other rune sets which don't follow the Rule of Agrippa - runes so powerful that they form their own Resonance and are connected loosely by Chordal Cadence."

"What exactly is Chordal Cadence, Professor?" Harry asked as they waited for the gates to open.

Dumbledore frowned for a moment. "It's… quite a difficult concept to explain, especially if you haven't played an instrument. There are progressions of sound which seem to make sense together, both to our ear and to Magic itself. If you'd listen to some popular music among muggle teenagers, you'd find that some of the strongest chord cadences can be felt by even them, especially if they imbibe things that change the pathways in their mind. I think it can be said that the 'point' of Runes, which are somewhat archaic means of communication, is to cross the divide between the self and the conceptualization of magic, almost as language crosses between our thoughts and what other people hear. Now, take my arm, Harry."

They Disapparated (Harry finally discovered the proper term for the teleportation process) in a little pop, rather sloppy for what it was, but Dumbledore had been quite deep in thought.

"I apologize, that was rather abrupt," Dumbledore said immediately as they stood before a brick wall.

Harry stared at it, felt the hum of magic.

"It is important to train your senses even without the help of your eyes. What is, so to speak, the key to this puzzle?"

Harry tapped on a brick.

"Now, that's generally not the way forward. Had this been a thing of malice, you would have lost anything from your arm to your life. You mustn't rely on tactile information either."

Harry traced the hum of magic to a very specific brick.

"That one," he said, pointing just off the center of the wall. "What must we do to pass?"

"Now, that's a question, indeed. I personally can tell from my sense of smell, attuned to the way different magics interact. I smell quite a bit of wood, despite the fact that no wands are out and casting. So that implies that there needs to be a touch of magic reliant on a focus. Most wizards utilize their wands as their primary focus. What have you used?"

Harry removed a pencil from his pocket and lobbed it with a burst of magic at the brick. The already charged brick exploded with the sheer force of Harry's willpower and Dumbledore raised his hand to stop the shrapnel in midair.

"Now, you see, it's not always the best idea to use force on wards. They tend to explode. Outwards." Dumbledore put his arm back down and the destroyed brick wall crumbled to the ground. He pulled out his wand and waved it quickly as some bystanders on the other end stared in shock, quickly rebuilding the structure. He tapped the same brick with his wand and the bricks parted ways to reveal the pair.

Dumbledore cast a quick charm which he called a "Forget Me" to Harry over the two of them and they passed through the crowd uninhibited.

They turned a corner and Dumbledore nodded at a structure which proclaimed "Ollivander's Wands since 382 B.C."

"Has it really been there for that long?"

"Oh, of course, my boy. The entire Alley was built around it and near it. Wands used to be interchangeable terms for staves, which were far more popular for men in the old days. Now, hiding a wand is far easier, so after the Statute was passed, wands became standard. Another casualty of secrecy."

They stepped into the shop and Harry immediately scanned the area with his eyes. An old man was hiding under a fabric of what could have only been invisibility and was trying to sneak around without making any noises.

Dumbledore looked straight at the man and shook his head.

"Oh, Brother Albus!" the man who could only be Ollivander cried out, lifting the spell in a mere moment.

"Linus, you are far too dramatic for your own good. I have brought young Harry here to procure a wand. I have the strong belief that there will be a certain phoenix feather in the wand he chooses."

"The Other?" Ollivander said, a touch of seriousness entering his tone.

"Yes, the brother wand. He was marked, after all." Dumbledore touched his own forehead to indicate his meaning. Harry nodded in understanding. "The feather was given by Fawkes, a companion of mine. Fawkes gave two feathers, one of which resides in the wand of the man who marked you."

"What happened to his wand?" Harry asked.

"It was stolen from the site of his downfall."

"There was someone in there after he attacked me," Harry decided. Dumbledore did not disagree.

Ollivander passed the wand to Harry. "Eleven inches. Holly and Phoenix feather. Give it a wave, young Harry Potter."

"Push your magic through. If you feel any sort of resistance, it is not the correct wand for you, Harry."

Harry did, showering the room in gold sparks. He frowned at the wand, even as Ollivander clapped and beamed at Professor Dumbledore. "Professor… it expects something of me. It's trying to tell me something."

Dumbledore nodded. "Keep channeling your magic through it without intent. Connect with it."

Harry did and more golden sparks formed raining pools of residual magic on the other wands on display, which responded this way and that - some of them began to produce sparks themselves and one extremely long white wand emitted a jet of water which soaked the side of a wall.

"It wants… More. That's what I'm getting from it."

"You will do great things, young Harry Potter. Great things indeed." Professor Dumbledore nodded along, lost in thought.

"Well, we'll be going now, after a quick visit to my old friend Florean. Thank you, Linus!" He dropped several galleons, the largest denomination of wizarding currency, onto the counter and all but pulled Harry out of the shop.

"There were three of us, back in the day. Myself, Gellert Grindelwald and Linus," Dumbledore said as the door shut firmly behind them. It had begun to rain slightly and the streets were mostly clear of pedestrians. "We were the three students of Livius the Light Mage. Linus had no talent in magic and all the talent in the world at wandmaking and Livius had only taken him as a student out of a favor owed to his father."

"Did he become great as well?" Harry could not help but ask.

"Oh, it would take a good amount of talent to kill Linus Ollivander indeed. But he was not the brightest of us."

"Who was the brightest?"

Dumbledore smiled. "I would like to believe that I was a shade more talented than Gellert, though he certainly had far more ambition than I did. But that's enough about me."

They ducked into a side-alley and Harry took Dumbledore by the arm again to be whisked back to his place of learning.

**Better Just to Have It**

They stood on the platform as picture perfect families, as if everyone hadn't been at war a scant eleven years ago. Lord Greengrass shook Lord Malfoy's hand stiffly as a political ally. Lady Malfoy and Lady Greengrass eyed one another with icy and icier stares. Draco Malfoy and Daphne Greengrass stared at one another with open dislike and casual disinterest respectively.

"I wish your son the best of luck in the following term," said Lord Greengrass.

"Your daughter as well," Lord Malfoy said, without a hint of displeasure, though he managed to convey quite a bit.

Daphne dragged her trunk onto the train and sat in the first unoccupied compartment she discovered.

In several moments, Neville Longbottom had opened it. "I've lost my damn toad before the train's even begun moving," he said, with a curl of lip that sat between exasperation and amusement.

"Well, go and get a prefect to summon it, or do it yourself," Daphne said irritably.

"What the hell bit you?" Neville asked, surprised at the sudden shift in temperature in the compartment.

"I saw Draco Malfoy on the compartment. My father shook his father's hand."

Neville's face darkened as well. "Well, there isn't shite we can do about that sort of thing," he said, a very undignified accent surfacing.

"Stop cursing. You're bringing shame to your House."

"Fuck my House. My father doesn't care and I don't care either. I can be as foul-mouthed as I want to be."

"You weren't quite this bad at the Bones'," Daphne decided. Neville looked at her and barked in laughter.

"Well, I didn't want to get banished like Malfoy did. Say, what house do you think you'll be sorted into?"

"Ravenclaw or Slytherin, probably the latter. It's a family thing, and the Hat's supposed to take that seriously."

"The Hat. My mum says it said nice things to her and judging by her response, it put her into Hufflepuff. I think I'm going to be as angry as possible or try to outthink it. I'll be okay with either Gryffindor or Slytherin myself, though my father says he bleeds red and gold."

Neville dragged his trunk into the compartment and lifted it with a heave onto the rack. He pulled his wand out and pointed it in the general direction of the door.

"Accio Trevor!" he cried, snapping his wrist. Nothing happened. "Well."

Daphne shook her head. "You'd better put your hand in front of your f-"

A blob of green and brown blob came flying into the apartment. Neville parried with his wand out of obvious practice and Trevor the toad slammed against the window, spraying toad oil onto the two unoccupied seats.

"Shit!" and "Well, I'm glad I wasn't sitting _there_," were said simultaneously.

Neville picked up Trevor by the nape of the neck and dumped him into what looked like a horrendously insecure basket and attempted to clean the toad oil off of the seats. He ended up setting it on fire.

Daphne shook her head. "Toad oil's very arithmantically unstable. Anything that isn't near a complete number sequence will set it on fire, so only fours, sixes and twelves to clean it up."

"How do you even remember things like that?" Neville wondered aloud.

"I remember important things," Daphne said.

"That was pretty backhanded," Neville said, glaring, though he was clearly amused.

"Well, what do we have here?" came a very unwelcome voice as the compartment slammed open.

"Malfoy."

"Get out."

"Now that isn't a way to greet old family friends, is-"

Daphne pointed her wand under Malfoy's chin. Neville scooped up a batch of toad oil surreptitiously in his left hand.

Behind Draco Malfoy was a pair of what seemed to be human gorillas. "Vincent Crabbe and Gregory Goyle then. How does it to start kissing rings on your knees before you're even eleven?" Neville spat.

Crabbe grunted. Goyle growled.

"You know what? I'm going to teach you a lesson," Malfoy said, pushing Daphne's wand out of the way and drawing his own. Daphne slid back to the previously dirty seat in preparation of a duel and Neville threw the toad oil at the three newcomers.

"What the hell is this?" Malfoy said, spitting out gunks of it. "Stupefy!" he cried, pointing his wand at Neville, who displayed his prowess in parrying things with his wand yet again. It burned a slight singe mark a little to the left of Malfoy's head.

"Don't fuck with me, Malfoy," Neville shouted.

"Fighting on the train is really, really against the rules!" someone shouted several feet away. The girl who was presumably the speaker squeezed between Crabbe and Goyle, past Malfoy and into the compartment.

She had slightly curly brown hair, a shockingly pretty face and was already dressed in her school robes.

"Recognize her?" Daphne asked, a little shocked at how quickly the girl had managed to get past Malfoy's bodyguards.

"Nope," Neville said.

"Must be a mudblood then," Malfoy said, his face twisting into a sneer.

"Hey, that's not a nice word," the girl protested.

"It's what you are. A filthy-"

"Enough!" Daphne said sharply. "All four of you, get out or I _will_ set you _all of you_ on _fire_," she finished, her voice steadily rising in volume.

Another voice floated in. "Well that's not very nice."

Crabbe and Goyle parted to reveal a boy with messy, jet black hair, green eyes, a bemused stare and a scar in the shape of a lightning bolt on his forehead.


	7. Collide

Welp, I'm at it again. Mostly through my midterms. Bio's coming up, and that's going to be 25 hours of studying clocked over the course of this damn weekend.

Chapter 7: **Collide**

**Kaleidoscope**

"Have you ever had your world come apart?" he asked the guard pleasantly.

The man was young, a representative from Atlas and confident that the old man could not escape, so he answered the idle question.

"No. I have not."

It was true, Gellert could see. The guard walked with the air of someone ignorant of the loss in the world.

Gellert didn't say anymore to the guard, and the younger man was content to let his thoughts slide to the horror stories he had heard about Herr Grindelwald.

Gellert's fair hair had turned gray, then silvery white in his old age. The cell he resided in was not dank or even uncomfortable, but the bars that kept him from leaving it reminded him quite clearly that he was, indeed, a prisoner.

Once a year, on Christmas morning, Albus Dumbledore would come to see him, but literally no one else in the world had visitation rights. The only human contact were young and dumb guards with their hearts forged in a world that hadn't ever known terror.

He thought idly of the forces that he had betrayed and stolen from, the power he had amassed. He thought back to the rhythm of the Root, the staccato clap of compound time, spinning a melody that only he and the other pillars of the Universe could hear.

The thoughts rushed to the forefront of his mind, pushing him back against the wall as a sheen of sweat ran down his face at the mere memory of the defining moment of the century. Flamel, forever young at forty-one, and Schweinorg, the grizzled warrior of a million battles, had been slamming their hands together to the beat of Root, in deference to war, providing support in the only way that Albus could accept, a semi-circle of the nameless and faceless defenders of the Light following their example. And across from him, stood Albus Dumbledore.

As the Cloak slowly fluttered to the ground from Dumbledore's hands, he had stabbed the Wand into the soil. And at this, even the Root silenced itself for a moment, taken aback at the sheer stakes of this battle, the sheer magnitude of this final wager, the infinitum of the magic within the Universe grinding to a halt.

And then, he heard every second, the only sound that broke the still of the Battle. Tick. Tick. Tick.

And when Chronos stood beside him, when Aeon knelt next to the Bumblebee, clapping gently to the sound of music, the Clock stopped.

He thought of the Phoenix calls that dug deep into him, the Winged Serpent whispering sweet nothings into his ears and the Titans rising from the Earth.

Gellert had nothing left, his circuits ripped out of his very body, but he still heard the final march of the Root, ready to end in fire or ice.

**Don't Know Me No More**

"You're Harry Potter," Daphne said resignedly. She had hoped for this meeting to occur at another point.

The girl who had made a fuss about school rules snapped her head around at an admirable speed and looked at the boy searchingly, attempting to discern whether or not he truly was Harry Potter.

Harry nodded absentmindedly as he stared intently from the boy holding a clump of greenish-brown goop in his left hand to the blonde girl weaving little patterns with her wand at the two Dudley-sized boy flanking yet another boy, and the girl who had been shouting about rules earlier.

The blond boy looked horrendously angry about the splotches of goop all over him. He wiped his hands on his robe and nodded almost ceremonially to Harry and extended his hand.

"I am Draco, scion of House Malfoy."

Harry shook it mockingly and introduced himself as "Harry, scion of House Potter." Evidently, this had actually been the response that Draco Malfoy was expecting, as he smiled broadly through the gunks of slime on his face.

The other boy reluctantly stood and offered his hand to Harry as well. "Neville, House Longbottom." Deciding to follow the routine, he repeated his introduction a second time, and then a third time as the blonde girl shook his hand quickly as "Daphne, House of Greengrass."

Harry looked expectantly at the other girl, but she looked as lost outwardly as he was inwardly.

Draco pointed at her. "Mudblood or Halfblood, then."

Harry frowned at him.

"That's fucked," Neville protested.

Draco smirked at him. "I thought you were _trash_, but I never took you for a Mugglelover, Longbottom."

Neville turned to Daphne. "Please set him on fire."

Daphne, whose angry had been terrible and cold, nodded curtly and sprayed Draco Malfoy with sparks. Harry watched as they lit up the oily brown substance on the boy's body and he screamed, but Draco had quickly put them out with his own wand.

"You just _burned_ him," the girl who had still not introduced herself shouted extremely loudly at Daphne Greengrass. "That's _sick_!" She looked ready to cry. She looked expectantly at Harry.

Harry, too, was taken aback. "You really did set him on fire," he said, rather at loss for words, but Draco had already prepared his next spell.

"Incendio!" he cried, and a jet of slightly blue flames raced towards the general direction of Daphne and Neville. Harry held up his arm in the same way he had seen Dumbledore stop projectiles from hitting him when he nearly destroyed the entrance to Diagon Alley, mustering his emotions to _protect_, as Dumbledore had done.

The flames stopped in midair and fizzled out. "What the hell is going on?" he shouted, mostly at Daphne and Neville.

"He's spouting Death Eater bullshit," Neville fired back, as if that explained everything.

Harry shrugged. "What the hell is a death eater?"

And then, the world stopped as everyone stared at Harry as though he had gone insane.

"What?" Draco choked at last. Even the unnamed girl seemed taken aback.

**Like the Wind**

Astrid took slow, measured steps towards the entrance to the Museum. The Clocktower stood immediately behind the Parthenon-styled entry hall, a nod to the Greek mages who had founded the association in Athens so many years previously.

She placed her hand onto the grand doors and they responded to her magic, surging open without a sound and she walked in.

"Identification," said a voice behind a too-tall receptionists desk, obscuring everything but the hair and eyes of the woman who worked behind it. She was a brunette.

"You know who I am," Astrid said softly.

"Identification," she repeated.

Astrid placed her wand onto the desk and it hummed lightly. _Maple and phoenix feather, twelve inches, swishy. Good for subtle spells_, said a voice in her head.

"Oh my," the receptionist said, quite surprised. She was used to surly mages, but none would surrender their weapons without prompting.

"I am the Green of the Mage's Association, sworn to defend and protect the sanctity of the Root that binds us to this world."

Her cloak fluttered at the strength of her proclamation and several lightbulbs blew out, showering the walls in glass.

Astrid picked her wand up and walked deeper into Clock Tower, into the jaws of the enemy.

"Lady Greengrass," said a careful voice behind her.

"Sophia-Ri," she responded. Astrid Greengrass bowed to no one.

"It is a pleasure to have you within our walls again," the man said quietly. His pride had been stung, but he did not expect to be called a Lord by someone as powerful as the woman in front of him.

"Thank you. I am headed for my confirmation, Davidus."

Now he was insulted. She did _not _have permission to use his first name, but he stewed quietly rather than vocally.

Astrid smiled vaguely, a look of consternation upon her face. "Davidus, I have known you for very many years. You are one of the few that I trust to make the right decisions. Why must you be so cold?"

He stepped back as if he had been slapped. "Lady Greengrass, I protest…"

"Go in before I do. You are technically late, so the General will be technically angry if I showed before you," Astrid said as they stopped before a nondescript door.

Davidus Sophia-Ri nodded in thanks and opened the door, then stepped in quickly.

Astrid stood before the door for another two minutes, then slipped her wand back into her robes and walked into the room.

The light was quite bright, harshly illuminating the faces before her and she felt no small amount of trepidation. Five people were seated in the front row of the auditorium she had walked into, and various faces and names she barely remembered behind them, in order of importance. She walked up onto the large stage.

"Lord Philosopher," she said first, addressing the plain, middle-aged man who stared at her with intelligent eyes. This was Lord Flamel, possibly the only man in the room who could strike her down easily. She curtsied.

"General Kaleidoscope," she followed, moving to the right. She looked into his dark eyes and he smiled as though he had learned something humorous about her.

"You've got guts, girl," he drawled in a long, deep rumble. He laughed aloud and she smiled back and curtsied at him as well. He was Lord Zelretch.

"Professor Dumbledore," she said seriously. He gave her a doleful stare, as though he knew how disappointed she was in the proceedings. He stroked his beard, indicating to her that he wanted to speak to her after the ceremony was done. She bowed deeply at him, eliciting several angry glares from the crowd, but she was beyond caring.

"General Barthomeloi." The General was a woman slightly younger than her, with a riding crop to her side and a bored expression upon her face. They had not known one another - they were drafted into different schools in the Association at different time periods.

She then turned to the fifth person and nodded at the teenager who was tapping her foot impatiently. "Peer Blue."

The Blue smiled at her. Astrid thought she saw the slow breakdown of sanity already, the complete lack of fear that she had tried to have.

"Astrid Greengrass," called a voice from the second row.

"Jeremiah Edelfelt," she called back, a challenge. Jeremiah Edelfelt was the lowest of the low, so obviously he would rise to the highest ranks of the Mage's Association. She hated everything about him, from the snarky tone of voice that reminded her of a young Jimmy Potter (had he really died with Lily eleven years ago?) and a hair of rather disgusting red-gold that would probably look better on a girl.

He sniffed. "You are charged with defending the knowledge of the Mage's Association. How do you respond."

"I will fulfill my duties, better than anyone else can," she said. Lord Flamel nodded at her.

"Astrid Greengrass," said another voice.

Oh, was this the game they were playing?

"Staphin Archibald El-Melloi," Astrid shot back, smirking. "How is your son Kayneth?"

He looked ready to attack her.

"Oh, I'm sorry. My condolences for his death. The Holy Grail is quite a prize, but I don't believe it was quite worth the possible loses."

Several of the men and women in the rows behind him stood up in defense of the family's honor.

"I suggest that you _sit down_," Astrid said, pushing her magic into her speech, weaving it within her deep knowledge of the speech. It was rather effective, as even those who could have fought it decided to calm down instead.

Zelretch _giggled_.

"Provide proof of your ability," said General Barthomeloi, without a hint of respect.

Astrid cocked her head at the General for a moment as whispers grew in the auditorium.

She paused, wondering exactly what she could do. Then, she smiled.

"Fight me," she responded, in a low, predatory purr.

The whispers grew to a fever pitch as Lorelei Barthomeloi walked onto the stage.


	8. Lines

Damn why am I still awake. It's 5:30 in the morning. My life doesn't suck. It's not even insomnia. It's like, a messed up sleep schedule. Oh college :(

** Kaleidoscope**

She'd seen many things throughout the years.

The Trifecta weighed heavily in her mind.

They were all still alive and shadows of their former selves. A researcher, a salesman and a granny. But once upon a time, she flew against Germany on the first ever Shooting Stars in the name of all that was good, all that was Great.

The Greatest Generation.

And now she sat alone in St. Mungo's unwilling to speak to anyone. The Healers said that she was unstable, unresponsive to their treatments. As if something as weak as a cheering charm from a fresh Hogwarts graduate could possibly help her fight the Black.

In her mind, she saw the cracks in the Black, but she was quite incapable of moving beyond her current state, unable to take a dive into the sheer pain once more.

But one day, when the clouds gathered again, when Voldemort rose again, she would push through the Black as though she was plunging into boiling water and pick up the dust-caked wand on the dresser.

And for nothing else, no matter how many times her son cried over her unmoving body. There were stakes, and only the world was a counterweight to more pain than anyone show ever experience.  
**  
A Song of Dust**

Daphne's bravery won out as her incredulous voice broke the terribly disbelieving silence of the train compartment. "I'm sorry, would you please repeat that?"

Harry frowned, his eyes locked onto Daphne's, as confused as she was. "I wanted to know what a Death Eater was."

At these words, Harry knew that he had failed a set of expectations that the group seemed to have for him.

Neville shrugged, threw his hands into the air and placed them back onto the seat with a wet smack. Daphne took a deep breath, then sighed. Draco looked absolutely furious, mirrored by the two boys flanking him. The girl he still didn't know the name of continued to stare in disbelief.

"There's no way you're Harry Potter," Draco finally decided. "Or you're having one on us," he amended, his tone changing to suspicious rather quickly.

"Don't be stupid," Daphne said, though she too seemed to be having trouble with this turn of events that Harry still didn't understand.

The other girl finally exploded. "But they've written books!" she cried, "books about how you fought dragons, befriended unicorns, defeated the most evil of Dark Lords to exist..."

Harry quirked his eyebrow. "Are you certain that you aren't confusing me with someone named Albus Dumbledore?"

Neville sniggered. "No, I think it's pretty clear that while Harry here defeated Voldemort, somehow, he hasn't really been doing all those things from children's stories." He smiled, looking somewhat disappointed, but relieved. "Though it would have been cool," he added as an afterthought, lost in a fantasy of slaying dragons and dark wizards.

"Then what were you _doing_ all this time?" the girl demanded of Harry.

"What were _you_ doing?" Harry shot back.

"Well, I was just a normal _muggle_ before this entire mess began. Then I became a _mudblood_," she snapped.

"I don't even know what that means," Harry shouted. "Can someone tell me what the hell is going on?" His voice dropped to an annoyed hiss, "I got a letter. I learned some things about the world that I didn't know before. Now I'm on the train where people are throwing _goop_ at each other and setting each other on _fire_."

"Well, don't look at me-"

"No, really, don't look at her. She's not worth your-"

"Shut up, Malfoy," both Daphne and Neville chorused.

Daphne stood up and pointed her wand at Draco's chest. "This is what's going to happen. You are going to back the hell away and let the people who aren't absolute buffoons explain," she threw a quick glance at Harry, saw that he seemed to be not enjoying himself, "what's going on."

Draco took a step forward and closed in on Daphne, their noses very nearly touching. "Do not presume to command a Malfoy," he seethed, his cheeks splotched red and the wand very nearly poking a hole in his robe.

"Do not _presume_ that you're all high and mighty because you can talk like daddy," Daphne said, pushing him off of her with a quick jab, from upon which her wand emitted a bang and threw him into the wall next to Goyle.

In a flash, Harry shut the door and locked it with an apologetic glance to the girl outside and took a seat.

Daphne giggled, but Neville looked uncharacteristically solemn.

"Well, you've made a choice, I guess. I think it's the right one." Neville furrowed his brow. "He's not going to let that slide. And I don't think that girl will be too happy with you the next time you see her either."

"A choice?"

"Yeah. My dad reckons that people choose how they ultimately end up on the train. It's not set in stone," Neville amended quickly to the disbelieving stare, "but the people you sit with, their families, their beliefs, you either shared them already, or you'll pick up some of it. But what the hell do I know."

Harry shrugged.

"No, really. I didn't even know that toad oil was flammable."  
**  
The Shortest Distance Between Two Points**

The auditorium was a beautiful affair of the melt, an idea that came together in strands of age and wisdom and unity that defined the Association since its founding. It was in here that the quorum of five hundred convicted Havelock Sweeting of being too powerful for a unicorn breeder and shunted him into the position of a General. It was in here that Livius of the Burning Light, Livius No-Name, the Light Mage slaughtered eighty three Church Elders who had thought they were coming into enemy territory like Spanish Conquistadors fighting pagan Incas. It was here that Nicholas Flamel himself fell to his knees before Albus Dumbledore and kissed his robes, reversing the forever-sacred ritual of master and apprentice and shocking the world into realizing that the man was the Philosopher's equal.

And it was here that Astrid felt the well-stained mahogany stage, cut aeons ago from lands that didn't exist anymore, whisper to her the heroic deeds of the men and women that came before her, the arcane magic that they used. If not Revelation, then understanding was what she received from it, the analysis of the good Earth, of forces lined up to protect her, forces lined up to defend both the order and the chaos.

It always helped Astrid to take a good look at her surroundings, to find this understanding, even as time slowed for her. She saw in sharp clarity the clomp-clomp-stomp of General Barthomeloi's boots as they waged war against the respect accorded to her.

The austere mahogany of the stage pulled in the sound of her boots, muting them and transmuting her actions into her intentions.

Astrid analyzed Lorelei, a spirit of the wind, a spirit of offensiveness pushing forth, a spirit that directed the very flow of the wind from her circuits.

Lorelei took a step.

Astrid reached out, an impossibly thin line of magic leaving her fingertips, alarming the other woman. But nothing seemed to happen, so she took yet another step and faced Astrid on the stage. The line branched into a million strands in long-form fractals that touched everyone in the room in an ultimate blend of the order and chaos, _in nomen naturalis_, the name of nature.

Professor Dumbledore's eyes widened fractionally as he felt the lines measure his breathing, his deep, calming inhales and the short puffing exhales of an old man. He was the master of intricacies, the only one in the room who could perceive the events that were unfolding, though Astrid was sure some of the greater mages could undo it by sheer force of will rather than through a knowledge of exactly what they were undoing.  
_  
A line is the shortest distance between two…_

The Philosopher certainly felt _something_ brush over him, felt the change in the air, possibly due to his too many years of studying the ambience and reproduction of magic in the noble art of alchemy. Even, even breaths, not quite human, but of someone who had learned to breath all over again.

The points of her intent traversed the fractal to find the mages in the room. Zelretch and his harsh pulls, a certain sort of hedonism in finding everything pleasurable about the uncaring world. The shallow breaths of Lord Edelfelt, whose appearance was kept not by good health but by magic. There was nothing magical about a breath, save for those who were barely human any longer.

She nearly paused as she felt an entity in the room that simply did not breath, or if it did, it was for show, for the beauty of rising breasts and the caricature of humanity. An ancestor? No, no, nothing like that. A puppet of some sort.

To Lorelei now, the excitement of battle upon her chest like the striking hammer of lame gods of old.

Everyone in the room felt the strength of Lorelei's magic building as she took her first step on stage, the singing wind ringing against their sensibilities.

And it was that moment in which Astrid chose to disappear.

Lorelei paused, her spell upon her lips like a sort of song she had sung too many times to remember what the lyrics meant, and immediately moved out of the way of the blade of was it _grass_, green and true and beautiful, that flew through the air at a speed that lit it on fire from the friction.

A strange impulse, garnered from hundreds of battles with entities with unknown powers, prompted her to slice the very air before her with the strength of the wind, and she watched as the strands held in place by magic fell away, shimmering and iridescent like taut spiderwebbing.

A strange lilting melody began to play, one that Lorelei just understood.

"_You will find that I am quite different prey than a Vampire, General_."

Lorelei snarled, cutting the very air again. More strands fell away. She aimed a huge slicing crescent of the element at the area where Astrid had been standing. It pushed through the strands and cut some of them, but the majority held. When it finally reached the point where Astrid had been, it passed right through and the strands slowed her magic until it left the slightest of gouges against the far wall.

A melody began to play again, a frantic frenzy of notes in a rhythm that Lorelei could have sworn she had heard before. She took several quick glances about the room even as she cut away at more strands that were swarming over her.

Was Dumbledore golf clapping? Lorelei bit down a pained laugh at the absurdity until she realized that he was clapping along to the rhythm. Her eyes flickered from one person another.

The Philosopher was drumming into his leg. Zelretch's supposedly impatient taps of the foot were, too, to the rhythm. Blue was rocking back and forth. Either she had been slipped a strong hallucinogen or she had severely underestimated the Green.

"_Do you see?_"

Dumbledore certainly didn't want her to win, to splatter his pupil along the wall in a spray of red as she was fond of doing. He was the only active participant in the rhythm. She pulled her senses together to create a rudimentary sort of telescopic mage sight. Yes, the old man was emitting the most magic.

But even as she realized that he was emitting the _most_, even she was fueling whatever this spell was, alchemy or illusion.

She thought of ways in which the greats would have defeated the woman before her. Anyone of the Merlinic line could burn their way through it by sheer force. The Kaleidoscope could possibly find a world in which this rhythm was different, and discover the true nature of it, dismantling it. The Philosopher could find the Truth of a world that had endured and survived beyond the death of even this rhythm…

As her mind cycled through the ways that men and women greater than her could deal with the problem before her, she realized that she didn't quite have the wherewithal to defeat Astrid Greengrass.

She ground her teeth, she was a Barthomeloi, a General who had destroyed many, many vampires who could _easily_ kill this pathetic woman…

And then the Philosopher was on stage.

"I do believe that this is enough. The experience has been quite disorienting even among the best of us," he decided.

Immediately, the strands drew themselves back, clumped together, and the figure of Astrid Greengrass was visible once more beside him.

Astrid said nothing, but that was far louder to Lorelei than any sort of gloating could have been.


	9. Half a Train, Half a Soul

Author's Note: Oh hey guys. Hurricane Sandy just came and put its windy genitals in my face, but I'm still alive and kicking. After I write this chapter, I'm going to fight her with a baseball bat. Wish me luck.

**Kaleidoscope**

There was power in the world, but he wasn't a part of this power. The Ancestors slinging spells that unmade cities, the full muster force of the association, the church's silent, deadly executioners, the four hundred faceless families who fought demons, and the jointure of the natives and Europeans who conquered the New World to create magic made to _fight_, they were the power.

He was just a sewer denizen, one who learned about the toes not to step on and the toes to cut off without a second thought. It had always been this way, since the aegis of the Bumblebee's protection had left him.

The wizards of the European continent lived sheltered lives. They were in the lap of their greatest enemies, but the burning flame kept them safe for as long as anyone could remember.

The First Blaze of Merlin, the voice of the soul, the power that didn't give, the power that took away. As long as they didn't stray far from the light of the Flame, they would be safe.

But he was a wandmaker, someone who coded the mysterious world into objects that leant the wizards whom Dumbledore protected with power to defend themselves from one another.

He was always the least of three. When he stood besides the two giants of the magical world, Albus Dumbledore and Gellert Grindelwald as the last students of Livius the Light Mage. When he stood besides the two giants of England during the war, Augusta Longbottom and Alain Fortescue as the Trifecta that took entire cities after the fated landing at Normandy.

He was always Ollivander, a family name that produced weapons for greater men to wield.

Linus had not been satisfied with this. First he sought to create a more perfect wand, which he could use himself against the Dark Lord when the man named Tom Riddle rose to challenge what he believed was all the power in the world.

The Mages, the Churchmen, the Hunters, the Americans, they may laugh at the expense of wizards, but when a single star burned bright, the star of the wizard was bright enough to set the world on fire.

But then he had realized that the true path to more knowledge lay in runes. Runes to encode his wands better, inscribed in the core by hand. Runes to redirect and change the meanings, beef up the efficiency of his spells.

This was why he was running through a disgusting slum in Tel Aviv, dodging spells and bullets and what have you, with a book tucked under his arm.

He felt a crossbow bolt of all things slam into his back as he cleared the anti-apparition wards, but it didn't quite matter. He had won this one. He would live to play games with the big men.

**Ever Since the Word**

One thing that Harry learned about Daphne Greengrass was that she very much enjoyed sitting and thinking. During these times, her hair would inevitably fall in front of her face and she would push it away from her eyes in a flash of blonde that broke his train of thoughts.

Neville was not quite as comfortable with himself, fiddling with his nails, combing his hair with his fingers and drumming on the seats as though he felt as though there was something fundamentally wrong with the way the world sat but couldn't quite put his finger on it.

Harry took the time to analyze the way he acted through the more still moments of the day. He would swing his legs over the edge of the seat rather monotonously, and he would play with the pages of the transfiguration manual that he was reading.

Harry thought of the things that Dumbledore had said about magic. There seemed to be an element of repetition to it, something fundamental to the way the old man moved. Someone with less knowledge of the world's secrets would have called it grace. Harry called it strength.

"I think it's a good time to change into our robes," Neville said after the conversation that wasn't quite there lulled to a halt. Daphne stepped out of the compartment with her robes folded between her arms and Neville followed suit, leaving Harry in the compartment. He looked over the suddenly empty train car and shrugged. He pulled off his sweater and draped the robe over his shoulders, slotting his arms into them. In several seconds, Neville had returned.

"What do you think of her, mate?"

The question, at the surface, seemed to be a reach for his opinion, but as Harry watched Neville's eyes, he realized that it was more of a test. If Harry didn't answer in a certain way, he doubted that he would be great friends with Neville. It was pretty clear that the two had been friends for longer than he had met them.

But he wouldn't lie. "Quiet. I don't know her very well yet."

"Fair," Neville said, nodding, his face unreadable. Harry thought he saw a spark of relief in the other boy's eyes, but it was gone before he could figure what was quite relieving about his answer.

They were quiet for a while longer before Neville broke in the silence.

"It's just that she doesn't have that many friends. Her mum and my dad get along pretty well, so I'd see her sometimes, but she's never really gone to muggle school like I did and I never saw her at most of the gatherings."

"Gatherings?" Harry was interested.

"Oh, me and Daphne, we're both pureblooded, and most of the time, pureblood parents like it when their kids play with other pureblood kids."

"So what about people who aren't?" _People like me_ was implied.

"Oh." Neville looked distinctly uncomfortable. "I don't think they find out about magic until they're our age. My dad was kicking a stink about some bill they had in the Wizengamot to take away the magical children from muggles several years ago."

Harry nodded absentmindedly, thinking about his relatives. The thought traveled in a straight line from his relatives to his own talents, his own abilities, of his own making.

Daphne stepped back into the compartment with a kind of daintiness and sat quietly. Harry took a second look at her, trying to evaluate her again.

Abruptly, the train ground to a halt and the lights flickered out. Harry shrugged and grabbed his trunk, but Daphne put her hand on his.

"Hold it. We're not at Hogwarts yet."

Harry stared at her, vaguely confused. "But the train stopped."

Daphne shook her head. "When my mum used to tell me stories about Hogwarts, she'd say that we pulled into Hogsmeade station when the moon rose." She gestured at the setting sun. "Wands out."

True to her word, in a moment, there was a loud explosion of some sort which rocked the train, sending both of them careening back into their seats. A high pitched whine that Harry had not noticed earlier faded away.

"The wards have fallen," Daphne said, distinctly troubled by the fact. A line of worry creased her forehead and she pushed several strands of hair out of her eye.

There was another bang, the sound of a compartment door opening and harsh, indistinct shouting. A loud wail in the distance.

"Reducto!" called an older voice, several years Harry's senior. Another bang. The same voice gave a pained shouted as a _shick_ of metal entering skin was heard.

"That's an arrow. Did you hear the sound of it being fired?" Daphne asked, half in confirmation, half in resignation.

Another bang, another compartment door. The wailing increased.

"They're not killing the students," she decided. "They're looking for someone."

Harry stared at her.

"You or me, then, Harry. Me for my mum, and you because you're Harry Potter. It's time to put your dragonslaying skills to the test."

Harry chuckled humorlessly. "I've never even seen a dragon before."

"Well then, we're just fucked right," Neville grumbled. He walked to the door, opened it slowly, then pointed his wand down the hallway at a group of men dressed in red robes that were threatening students with a crossbow. His face was screwed up in thought for a moment, then he began to draw patterns with his wand, patterns that Harry recalled seeing Dumbledore flying through. Neville's motions, however, seemed choppy and awkward in comparison.

"Ardentes petram," he whispered, drawing his wand back and snapping it forward at the group.

A modestly sized chunk of red-hot rock grew from the dust in the hallway and shot towards the group. Daphne pulled Neville back in and closed the door.

"You fool. You don't have to see the results of your spell to know it happened," she hissed, even as there was a decisive _thunk_ of rock hitting someone and the someone screamed.

"Spread out!" someone shouted. "Kill whoever hit me." His words were accompanied by another pained grunt.

And then, abruptly once more, there was a roar of flame, and a very familiar voice. "Keep _all_ the compartment doors closed."

"Albus Dumbledore!" Neville whispered, hope lighting up his face.

Daphne and Harry nodded in relief.

"_Fiendfyre_!"

The roar of flame grew to a deafening volume, with the snarls of big cats and the hiss of snakes polluting Harry's quiet. Amid it all, there a beautiful song was heard. Harry tried to closed his eyes and let himself slip into his knowledge of his eyes, but the song was making it very, very difficult.

_Find your center, Harry, find it. Make it happen_.

Harry hugged his wand to his chest, the proof of his magic heating in his hand beside his arm and a red haze settled inside his eyes, the song pushing alongside it.

The song was _guiding_ the flame, this _fiendfyre_, that Dumbledore has summoned.

The flame slowly died to a halt and the roar couldn't be heard anymore. In tandem, all the compartment doors opened.

"Has anyone been hurt?" Dumbledore's voice boomed down the train from one end to another.

"Professor, it's Wood. He's taken something to the shoulder."

Dumbledore nodded, walked past Harry and sparing both him and Daphne a thorough glance before he picked up the aforementioned Wood as though he the boy weighed nothing and disappeared in a rush of wind.

A final message boomed through the walls. "Everyone will enter their compartment once more and the train will resume its journey to Hogsmeade station."

Harry did not hear any of this, as he was staring at the morbid piles of ash on the ground with no small amount of fascination.

**Too Young For Tragedy**

When Albus Dumbledore needed to leave, he left. There was always something that took him with urgency, picked him up off his feet and deposited him somewhere that was not around Nicholas.

The man sighed as he walked off, ignoring the proceedings that were sure to get violent. Zelretch wouldn't let it get out of hand, and the Green could handle herself quite well.

Nicholas chose the moment of silence that Dumbledore commanded to draw from the Philosopher's Stone, to find a moment when he was simply not where he was.

"Home at last, dear?" came the ethereal voice of Perenelle Flamel as he opened his eyes to the red and brown carpeting that his feet were now pushing into.

He sat besides his longest lover without a hint of fanfare and sighed.

"How goes it at the Association?"

"Fine. Albus left, so I left."

A musical laugh that raised his spirits filled the room. Perenelle was beautiful, but her voice was even more so, melodic and _perfect_ to his ears in equal amounts.

"A drink?"

She had left a tumbler of whisky on the coffee table for him. Nicholas smiled and downed half of it in a gulp.

Her hands ghosted over his shoulders and his smile brightened further.

"Albus tells me that young Harry Potter is attending Hogwarts this year, with little Astrid's daughter."

Perenelle's fingers pushed into his tired muscles. "I wonder…"

"Even good eggs can make for a bad breakfast."

Perenelle laughed. "Oh, there's no need to speak in riddles around me. Arcueid came calling this morning while you were away."

Nicholas turned to face her sharply.

"Oh, it wasn't a big deal. She promised to kill me, at some point in history. I told her that there were far worse things to fear than death, and she got rather angry."

"Was there property damage?"

"No."

"Well then."

Perenelle rested her head against his chest, her hair pooling about him. "I think she's beginning to feel the influence of the world on her. Human beings… have a nasty ability to make people like us _care_."

Nicholas kissed the top of her head.


	10. Requests

Author's Note: To illustrate how much I love all of you, let me tell you about my November. NaNoWriMo - it's National Novel Writing Month! But despite the fact that I intend to clock 75k (25k more than the 50k required), I'm still writing Fractal, to ensure no one hangs dry for a whole damn month!

It's funny how the Kaleidoscope segments are the hardest to write nowadays.

Have a Christmas gift, ladies and gents! I'm not actually dead! And I still respond to all of your PMs and reviews, as you know!

I'm not dead, somehow. O.O

**Kaleidoscope**

"I am the daughter of Winter."

Her eyes were closed and her right hand has drawn into a fist.

"Bereft of humanity, stark of compassion."

A caricature of a smile was now visible on her ethereally beautiful face, her left hand clasped over her fist and held against her bosom.

"The warmth has left."

A standing mirror shattered, sending a spray of glass and mercury about the room, ripping past the wards as if they didn't exist.

"A suicide mission." The old man was placid and _in control_ and it infuriated her. The room dropped several degrees.

"You have offended far too many people in your old age, Gellert Grindelwald."

He smiled. "Now now, I don't think anyone can say they held true to their principles without offending a group of fanatics or two."

"My Queen is not a fanatic!" Her teeth were bared.

"Oh no. Lady Mab is certainly not quite as insane as she would like everyone to believe."

"Do not speak her name!" she spat.

"I can call on the Queen as often as I enjoy without having to worry. Mab."

"Say it again…" she trailed off in an unformed threat.

"Mab. Is she summoned? No."

Despite her anger, the relief in her face was palpable.

"Are you here to kill me?" Gellert intoned. "There is nothing but a cage between us, a little bit of metal that your magic seems to reach through with ease."

She stared him down, suddenly suspicious.

"You certainly had no problem with deposing of my guards."

Her suspicion increased.

"So tell me, young _Maya Rorkin_, do you believe you have what it takes to kill me?"

Her name tore through her like a hurricane, spoken from the lips of God.

She crumpled to the floor, the Winter she released pulling deep into her body once more.

"I may not have access to a wand." Gellert grinned almost wolfishly, "I have lost my thirty two mystic codes to the keeping of Albus Dumbledore and the Association." Gellert's smile was full-blown now. "But I still know far more about magic, true or reproduced by humanity, than you do, my dear girl."

Gellert showed the manacles that kept him bound to a promise not to attack anyone. "Neutralizing magic is still within my paltry ability. Come back when you gain some power, girl. Then, we'll see about my death."

Through her sobs of anger and disappointment, she opened a portal and disappeared through it. Gellert felt her will freeze solid.

He laughed to himself. If only Albus could see him now, corrupting even the damned with a few honeyed words.

**Raise Your Armies**

The man was old, the man was so gray that he might as well been white and the man was powerful. His name was Albus Dumbledore and he looked rather displeased at the moment.

"Linus. I want to know. What. Did. You. Do?"

"Brother Albus." Ollivander closed his eyes for a moment, steeling himself to tell the man before him, who had guided him through his life, through his adventures under Livius the Light Mage, through the two Great Wars, through his time selling wands and biding his time…

"Linus," Albus thundered, but Ollivander had already begun speaking.

"I was behind Tel Aviv. You're too bright to think that these are separate scenarios, aren't you, Al? The arrest warrant from Germany that you're shielding me from, and Knockturne coming after me. The Knockturnes have always been one of the many trafficking arms of the Italians, and you gave the speech, _you_ did on the crime families that have been in Venice and Genoa for so long."

"What did you take from them?" Albus had calmed down quite a bit.

Linus frowned. "Something that doesn't belong to them to begin with. They're small fish. Piranhas, but they'd never challenge you, if they'd attack me. They're working through Germany because they want to divert your attention."

Albus drew a mental map through the continents. The Italians and the Germans were bitter about their defeat in the Great War and blocked his every attempt for trade relations between the British Isles and the rest of the world. The Italians were controlled by a false democracy with ties to nearly every shady marketplace in the world. One of them was Knockturn Alley.

"What did you take," Albus reiterated, a lot less angry now he had a grasp on the situation.

"Master's book."

Albus would never presume to call Livius the Light Mage his master - the man was far less powerful than him and had only pointed him in the right direction, to the right people, but Linus had always worshipped the ground the man walked on.

But despite all of that, his attention sharpened dramatically. "_The_ book."

"I took a crossbow bolt with an unknown poison to the back, but I'd take many more. Nothing a bezoar couldn't send away," Linus chuckled grimly.

"Let me see your back." It wasn't a request. Albus waved his wand and the curtains drew shut. "_Lumos_," he whispered.

The wound was angry and infected.

"You need to take better care of yourself, Brother Linus," Albus said quietly, rather disappointed in the lack of treatment.

"Not my fault. They won't storm my store without a warrant, but I'm pretty sure they have people in St. Mungo's."

Albus cast several rudimentary healing charms and wrote a quick ritual of cleansing on a piece of extremely thin paper for Linus to perform in his spare time. "For the life of me, I don't understand why you prefer _this_," Albus ripped off a corner experimentally, "over good parchment."

Linus smiled, but some bitterness showed. "It's harder for me to write runic sigils than it is for you, Al. Not all of us can be powerful beyond belief."

For a moment, Dumbledore looked almost ashamed, then his attention turned back to the scenario at hand.

"The book."

"The Nine True Chords of Spirit. Master never showed it to any of us, remember?"

Albus was immensely interested.

"I took a quick reading of it. It's not something that will make me as powerful as Master was, unfortunately." Linus seemed bitter. "It's almost a nonsensical list of philosophies that he taught us anyway. All about balancing and cleansing and choosing a simple trajectory of thought for every great scheme we planned. A roundabout copy of _The Light Arts_."

"Did you expect a spellbook that would augment your magic and allow you to gain recognition beyond what you currently enjoy? To join the Lords of the Light?"

"As you have," Linus said, the bitterness showing again.

Albus didn't deny it. He could afford to be far more straightforwards with Linus than he could with many others.

"May I take a look at it?" Albus queried. Linus nodded, pointing at a dusty tome on the table.

Albus flipped through it, trying to make some sense of the inane scribblings on the margin. It wasn't in print, but rather the flowing script of the Master's hand.

"I cannot believe the First Great War was fought over… this."

"I think everyone was under the same misconception that I was. They were unstoppable," Linus said, referring to Livius and Arcus the American. "They wrote The Chords together and everyone thought…"

Albus chuckled. "Now, they should have given this a little more thought, shouldn't they have? If they were so very articulate, would they have ever needed to take students? How can one book, no matter how powerful and specific, give you the tools necessary to approach the knowledge of a sage and the power of the First Blaze?"

Linus drew Albus's sleeve up and stared at the yellowish-gray patch of flesh on his right forearm. "The First Blaze." Albus noticed that the reverence had been lost.

"What did it every give you, besides a Phoenix and a license to through around Fiendfyre like a first year's charms?"

Albus could not, or would not answer.

**Birthing a Wizard**

"Firs' yers, o'er here!" boomed the giant of a man, his voice echoing through the fog. The majority of the students were shivering in the cold, unused to robes. Upper years were casting what they referred to as warming charms at as many people as they could see. Someone had the misfortune of being hit by three at once and his robes caught fire. The boy yelped, but the flame was quickly sealed away by wandwork from a girl with a Prefect's badge.

The first years were piled into an dock that Harry took especial care in observing. The ceiling retained a sort of cave-like feel to it, while the walls were smooth and uniform stone, too uniform to be built, but rather duplicated by magic. There was a dock that extended out into the water, either wet or dressed in a dark wood. Harry stared at the ceiling, sensing something amiss with it.

In an instant, his vision changed and a single idea was burned into his mind - protection. It would be safe here. It was an old and venerable command rather than something truly protective, reflecting intention rather than utility. Hogwarts, as a whole, was intended to be _safe_.

Harry climbed comparatively gracefully into a boat with Daphne and Neville, the latter of whom almost tripped, but righted himself by grabbing the dock.

"May I get on your boat?"

Harry looked up and saw the bushy-haired girl they had forced out of the compartment in order to deal with Malfoy. He nodded without a word. Neville shrugged and Daphne chose not to respond.

She tumbled into the boat with slightly more finesse than Neville and within a minute of silence, broken only by splashes and whispered curses, the boats were loaded.

"Ready ter go?" Hagrid boomed. Without waiting for a response, the boats began to move in tandem across the still pitchblend that reflected the lantern lights.

"Duck yer heads," Hagrid cried out suddenly and most students chose to bury themselves below the rim of the boat, but Harry looked dead ahead, examining the neck that led into the lake.

At first, his eyes were concentrated on a forest of ancient trees that carried a promise of mystery, but inevitably, his eyes were drawn to the huge castle, glowing with light and power to his left.

It was a magnificent sight. Shouts of wonderment filled the air, but Harry reacted by sucking in his breath deeply, tasting the cloying scent of the magic saturating his tongue. They were passing through some sort of barrier that he had not crossed before, and it showcased the strength of the castle far better than what he had read in the dock.

The boats glided into a long underground tunnel one after another and Harry turned his attention to the other people in the boat.

Daphne's eyes darted from one person to another and Neville was idly picking at his nails.

"What's your name?" he asked the other girl.

"Hermione. Hermione Granger," she said softly. Harry nodded at her and looked away again, his mind elsewhere.

The boats came to a stop along another lit dock and Hagrid pushed himself out of his boat, clambered to a rather menacing wooden door and slammed a fist against it as the first years followed his example.

The doors swung open and Professor McGonagall, the middle-aged Transfiguration professor, stood on the other side of the doorway. She introduced herself over the din and led them into an antechamber as Hagrid slipped away.

"Wait here," she ordered as she too followed Hagrid.

"The Sorting's going to happen now," Hermione said to anyone who would listen. "I do hope I get into Gryffindor. That's the house that Professor Dumbledore was in."

Daphne and Neville conversed softly about what the sorting could possibly entail and Harry looked from one person to another.

A red-headed boy was talking about wrestling a troll and Malfoy was bragging that he'd be in Slytherin in seconds.

In several moments, the door that McGonagall had passed through opened, and the first years filed in to be judged in front of an assembly of their elders and peers.


	11. Between the Rays

Author's Note: Next chapter, started on New Year's Day after I'm done with my celebrations and a nice ten hour rest. Hopefully I'll complete it by tonight.

Or LOLjk, it's the 2nd and I've just finished the Kaleidoscope segment.

We've only scratched the surface of this story.

There was a heavy lack of reviews last chapter. I'm not going to be that guy and ask you to fix it, but I do appreciate them very much!

Extra long chapter for all of you!

**Kaleidoscope**

With the wave of his hand, the door flew open. He rarely did anything without the help of magic nowadays, since the muscular degeneration in his arms made it impossible to do anything but hold onto relatively light objects like his wand.

"Good morning, Augusta," he called into the dark hallway. She wasn't quite expecting him, but he hadn't tripped any wards.

There was the sound of shuffling and instantly, every light in the manor exploded into the brightest they could be.

He furiously blinked as Augusta Longbottom descended the stairs, her wand drawn.

"What did you say to me as Linus and I breached the wards of Dresden?"

Augusta stared at him for a moment.

"Nothing. I looked at you and looked to the blood red sky, then shook my head and readied my wand."

He nodded.

"What did I set fire to, to keep us warm at the gates of Nurmengard?"

He squinted, trying to remember, then he chuckled. "Albus's beard. He put it out in an instant, but the look on his face kept us warm for a lifetime."

She smiled, a wistful expression. "Welcome to my home, Florean. Make yourself comfortable."

Florean walked over to an excessively uncomfortable chair and took a seat.

"There's a storm brewing, Augusta."

Dame Longbottom frowned.

"Harry Potter and young Neville has entered Hogwarts, with the Malfoy scion and the Greengrass prodigy. Albus sent me a very opaque letter about some trouble that Linus is in and I wish to visit him later today."

"We're getting old."

"Not as old as Albus. He still has his fingers in every pot of honey. I don't see how we can't come out of retirement for just a little while. The last war snuck up on us because we lived our lives for twenty years while our children and our spouses thought it'd be better to fight."

Now Augusta was angry.

"Florean-," she all but spat, but he cut her off.

"Even Abraxas and Edgar gave themselves away for the cause. We expected no less from Charlus and Dorea, but I can't help but wonder how many members of the Order need not have died had we raised our weapons."

Augusta strode over to a dusty cabinet and threw it open. Inside was a smattering of books and wands, rings and staves, darts and daggers.

"As you know, Florean, these are my mystic codes, all written or built from scratch by the dedication of the hope that every generation had the chance to change the world. Do you know how many of them still function?"

Augusta had always been the most aloof about her magical abilities of all the fighters.

"None, Florean. None. Thirty years of hard work, from when I was the genius, the anomaly of a girl, thought to be a squib at the age of eleven, throughout the time I did research with my brother in law as an unspeakable."

Florean sighed. "I'm not asking you to draw your mystic codes again. I'm asking for you to pick up a wand and investigate this deal with Linus with me. We've been partners in battle for too many years for us to just abandon him."

Augusta shook her head. "He was the odd man out when he learned together with Albus and Grindelwald so many years ago. Our so-called bonds are a fair bit weaker."

Florean didn't speak.

Augusta ran her hand over a crystal ball with a spiderweb crack within it.

"I'll be going then. Serve ice cream for a few more hours, then have a chat with Linus at four."

He knew she'd be there.

**Children**

It turned out that the Sorting would not have eleven year olds wrestle trolls. It wasn't a quiz of magical knowledge or any sort of test. They stood in line, and when their names were called in alphabetical order, they put a rather large hat on their heads and they were sorted by the hat.

The hat had sung a song, much to the amusement of the younger in the room and the boredom of the more grown up. Albus Dumbledore was a clear exception, as he smiled brightly at every cleverly rhymed verse.

Harry watched the Sorting as it unfolded before him like a soap opera - the low whispers and the calm ring of Professor McGonagall's voice providing a soundtrack for the judgment.

"Abbott, Hannah!"

A girl with blonde pigtails and far too much embarrassment for her own good stumbled out of line and trotted over to the stool and sat down. Professor McGonagall dropped the hat over the head and it fell all the way down to her nose. After a few moment, the hat's brim, which seemed to function as its mouth, opened.

"Hufflepuff!" it called out.

There was a smattering of applause from the table covered in black and yellow trimmings. Harry took a quick glance down the line of students and found an unmistakable sneer of the face of Draco Malfoy.

As Bones, Susan was called to sit her trial, Daphne elbowed him. "Which house?" she whispered frantically into his ear.

Harry shook his head and shrugged, then elbowed Neville to the left of him. "Which house?" he repeated, a shade more frantically than Daphne.

Neville's face scrunched up for a moment. "Daphne's going first. I'll try to get her house. Then you can see if you-"

His whisper was lost as the hat shouted "Ravenclaw!" for Brocklehurst, Mandy.

Harry gripped both Daphne and Neville's arms and nodded towards the Sorting, trying to divine how his year mates were being sorted based on their expressions as they approached the stool and their general personality - at least what was visible to him from a single glance.

"Slytherin!" the hat called for Bulstrode, Millicient. Harry thought he saw a pleased grin on the girl's face.

"Finch-Fletchley, Justin!" the hat screamed over the din created by the table in green and silver. The boy didn't seem to hold much confidence, but he kept looking hopefully at the pair that he had left behind.

"Hufflepuff!"

"Granger, Hermione!" The bushy-haired girl that they'd met on the train, who'd taken the boat ride with them, marched up to the stool, one foot in front of another.

This time around, the Hat took a rather long while. Harry could hear Malfoy's chortle but he kept his eyes on the lower half of Hermione Granger's face. She seemed to be biting her lip, conflicted about something.

"Gryffindor!" the hat finally shouted, sounding vaguely exasperated.

Harry nodded and pulled both his friends close. "I think you have some influence over where you want to be," he hissed at them.

"Greengrass, Daphne and I won't say your name again!" Professor McGonagall warned. Daphne walked over to the stool with her head held high and stared balefully up at the Deputy Headmistress, who seemed to just keep herself from rolling her eyes. She dropped the hat over Daphne's face.

"Slytherin!" the Hat chimed. Neville cursed under his breath. Harry flashed a quick smile at Daphne, who received more cheering than Vincent Crabbe before her.

"Slytherin and Ravenclaw won't be quite that easy for me to get into, I don't think," Neville whispered to Harry.

"Slytherin!" the Hat shouted for Gregory Goyle.

Harry watched the sortings a bit longer, before, "Longbottom, Neville!" jolted him out of his thoughts.

Neville marched up to the stool at stared at the hat warily, then let McGonagall drop it over his face.

He took the longest by far. For a moment, Harry watched his fists clench and unclench. There was even a false alarm as the Hat's brim opened, then shut again. A minute later, the hat waved back and forth emphatically, indicating a fair bit of nodding from the boy.

"Slytherin!" the hat shouted.

Silence. Complete and utter silence. Harry threw a glance at the staff table. Dumbledore looked confused, if not displeased. The tall, thin man dressed in black and off-black with a sallow face and a hooked nose which someone had identified as the Potions Professor gave Neville a shrewd stare. The Professor with his head wrapped up in a turban looked ready to faint. Professor McGonagall's nose twitched.

Neville looked around, shrugged, then walked over to the Slytherin table and sat down next to Daphne. There was a belated polite clapping for Neville which died away rather quickly.

"MacDougal, Morag!" was sorted into Ravenclaw and Malfoy was put into Slytherin nearly immediately.

A few more names were called, including a pair of twins who were sorted into Ravenclaw and Gryffindor respectively.

"Potter, Harry!"

The whispers grew to a fever pitch as Harry disassociated himself from the crowd and crept over to the stool.

Black, completely black. The hat shouldn't have kept out quite this much light.

_You're not looking into the inside of a hat, Mr. Potter. You're looking into a piece of your mind that you haven't quite filled yet._

Harry started. There was a voice in his head!

_No, Mr. Potter. There is a voice on your head_.

He nodded bemusedly, identifying the scratchy, fuzzy voice as that of the hat's.

_Difficult. Very difficult._

_A real challenge, eh?_, he thought back to the hat. _In that case, can you just put me into Slytherin_?

_You and Mr. Longbottom both. Aren't you too young to be making decisions off friendships that haven't seen a single test? Rather reckless, I must say. In that case, better be-_

"No!" Harry felt his lips move. He had actually shouted aloud.

_No? Not Gryffindor, young Harry Potter? I had sorted both your parents into-_

_No. Slytherin._

_Slytherin? Slytherin. You will be great. It's all here in your head. You're calm, hardworking and dedicated. Your intelligence is apparent to anyone who's spoken to you. You're brave enough to make decisions. Yet you're excessively loyal, I see it now! Are you sure you wouldn't be in_-

_Slytherin_, Harry thought more insistently.

_Very well._

"Slytherin!" the hat shouted.

If the silence had been deafening in Neville's case, it was now oppressive.

**Walking On The Road with Apollo To Your Back**

Astrid knew that it had gone south the moment a four-part ward layer had dropped on her general location and various bound fields kicked into effect. The bound fields were uniquely easy for her to deal with, considering her specializations in magic, but the wards were a little bit of a problem. They were designed far more to keep things in than to isolate a specific area and enable certain types of magic.

Day was about to become night and the sun's final rays were stretched and distorted gold and red through the branches of the trees in the forest.

Her senses stretched over the wards and her magic unspooled from her like rope coming free from its coil and she rose exponentially in strength.

"Ahh, I see. There's only one of you!" she shouted into the now-darkness. "Very close to pure, but not quite the same as our Fates, norn-that-isn't!"

There was no anger from the phenomenon, no response, but Astrid didn't expect it. This sort of magic reacted to action fed with amazing intention.

She cleared the film before her eyes and she was in a village again, rather than a forest. A pair of old men sitting on benches sat frozen in fear, a chess piece in one man's hand, a cigarette burned down to the filter in the other's. A dog was paused mid-jump, his eyes wide. The young girl who had bent down to pick him up had begun to bleed from the eyes.

"This is… not quite the type of production I enjoy seeing," Astrid muttered. Her adrenaline was coursing through her veins and her pupils were dilating, but she knew instinctively that she had nothing to fear.

She walked into an old bar and peered around. There were nearly twenty people in here, all frozen, but she had spied what she had wanted. She swept the men and women, who had all begun to bleed from their eyes to the side and flicked her hand.

A huge grand piano followed her out of the bar into the town square and she played a vengeful chord onto it.

"Who was the last man to defy you like this, not-quite-norn?" she whispered into the air. The air whispered back.

_Kill_.

"No, I don't think so. I think I'm going to do my job instead, and keep these poor people from, well, dying."

Her fingers snapped into a prelude, testing the strength and the bounds of the Curse. It was a Curse, a very unique one, one that made things like the Unforgivables which she had been warned about for so many years seem like child's play.

She seamlessly transitioned into another piece, now by Handel, recreating the suite of instruments with the different voices of the violins and trumpets she didn't have with nothing but the dexterity of her fingers.

The blood began to recede into people's face as the Curse tried its best to bring its influence against something as innocuous as the piece that Astrid was performing so masterfully, without holes, without openings.

"Now, that's the thing about the Baroque era, isn't it? It's quite an impenetrable _wall_." And with that, the music solidified. "There are very, very few forces as old as music, built off pitch and timbre and tone. And, of course, skill, dedication. It's a magic of its own, isn't it?"

The Curse fled and a village would forever wonder how they lost fifteen minutes of time. They would also wonder who had carried the piano from the bar into the square. through a door that was decidedly too small for it to pass through.


	12. The Hunt

Author's Note: So tell me, ladies and gentlemen, are your bodies ready for Fleur Delacour?

We're going to try something a little different in this chapter. Like, how about more words, guys?

**Kaleidoscope**

Albus Dumbledore tapped the tiny Charms professor on his right on the shoulder. "Filius. Tell Minerva that there are some international issues I must attend to,"

He stood up from the large golden throne at the center of the staff's table in the Great Hall and walked away quietly in the wake of Harry Potter's sorting.

After he passed through one of the side doors, he broke into a run up a set of stairs. The gargoyle guarding the spiral staircase to his office moved aside as soon as he was in sight and he cleared the hallway in record time, ran up the stairs and into his office.

Albus quickly sat his desk and observed the room, then clapped twice. A burst of magic left his hands as the wards activated all at once, barring disturbance and entry as well as ensuring his privacy.

Dumbledore slowly poured a cup of water into an oblong silver pan as he contemplated the forces of the world closing in.

Once upon a time, he wondered if he would need notebooks and thousands of galleons worth of ink to keep track of all his memories and observances, but he found, like his mentor, that he was quite capable if he relied on a quick run in with his Pensieve once in a while.

What sat before him now was not a Pensieve, however. It was a scrying pan, crafted by Lady Flamel herself, a gift as he left his apprenticeship with Nicholas, nearly seventy years ago.

He walked over to a medicine cabinet full of potions ingredients that might have been more difficult to obtain than the priceless pan itself and opened it. Albus carefully pushed the Phoenix tears away, carefully bottled in a stopper of red diamond, which ensured that no sunlight whatsoever would interfere with its properties. He gingerly placed alchemized Erumpent Horn fluid (an accident that had proven to be very, very useful and impossible to recreate) on another shelf and reached for possibly the most mundane of his ingredients - a small vial of dragon's blood.

The dragon was nonspecific, but it certainly didn't matter, as the blood was magically similar between nearly all the species. He closed the cabinet carefully and sat in the high-backed chair behind his desk once more. With the utmost precision, he measured a small quantity of dragon's blood and let it fall into the water, where it settled in a red film after a minute of waiting.

Albus then proceeded over to a relatively large table and selected a spinning silver device that had been invented far too long ago for how efficient it was. He placed it against the outer rim of the silver pan, due north and watched as a single cloud of purple smoke moved over the waters and changed the red film of dragon's blood into a clear, sharp image broadcasted from a pendant worn by Astrid Greengrass.

A delicate finger obscured his view for a moment, indicating that the Green understood her mentor was watching the events unfold before them.

**Artemis on Apollo Road**

"Fleur!" a familiar voice called.

She let her eyes sweep over the gathering of the Four Hundred and locked eyes with a boy three years her senior, who went to Beauxbatons with her.

"What are you doing here, Fleur?"

"Stefan," she said softly as he approached.

His eyes widened for a moment. "Your family- I've never heard of a Delacour family on the Four Hundred."

She shook her head, clearly dismissing him, but he'd have none of it. He began to speak about rather inane things.

Most fourteen year old girls would have been flattered by the attention of such a handsome, older boy, but Fleur was far too used to it to care even a smidgen.

Her eyes scanned the crowd and locked onto Astrid Greengrass.

Very few people knew that the Gathering of the Four Hundred existed, let alone how to get in, but it seemed as though no locked door could keep Lady Greengrass out. Fleur was surprised not to see Albus Dumbledore lurking about with his sharp eyes and sharper mind.

This was usually the most important bit of the Gathering, the two hours before it truly began. Deals were being struck and families were being destroyed, at this very moment. Fleur clenched her teeth and willed herself to pick up strains of conversation from those who surrounded her, but gave it up.

Those currently in power sat near the stage, their seats reserved in advance by families that owed them debts, and they talked among themselves.

Fleur scanned the crowd, trying to find old allies of her family, but they all seemed to be cozying up with their longtime enemies. She gritted her teeth and threw another glance at Astrid Greengrass. If anything, the resourceful mage had come to ensure nothing untoward directed at the Association or at the Order of the Phoenix would happen.

She grimaced again, thinking of all the stories her mother had told her about the Order of the Phoenix, formed by Albus Dumbledore and an old wandmaker. Fleur reached into her purse, which was empty except of a pair of pills which were green, powdery and had a happy face stamped on them. Unlike other girls her age, she kept her wand tucked between her skirt and her blouse at all points.

She downed another pill and waited, watching patiently. Fleur licked her lips. The taste was rather foul, bitter and reminiscent of lavender.

Within twenty minutes, the agitated euphoria crashed over her and her face tinged pink from her pounding heart. The lights grew bright and she had an urge to run over to Astrid Greengrass and engage the woman in conversation but she quashed the desire before it could take her over. Stefan was still talking to her, completely oblivious to the fact that the aura generated by her Veela heritage seemed nonexistent at the moment. Perhaps his mind was simply weaker than most.

She wasn't sure what the pills were made of - the first time she had gotten them in muggle Paris during a night out and some besotted man in his twenties had given her one - but they somehow hid her aura from any means of detection.

"Order to the Quorum of Four Hundred Who Hold the Demons Back!" boomed a middle age man from the front row.

Fleur scoffed, angry somewhere in her mind. There were barely two hundred families left - over the course of three thousand years, lines had been killed off or assimilated at nearly two or three a generation.

Tonight, however, she would be the one on the hunt.

As the man who had spoken (Fleur identified him as Lord Baldwin from the characteristic scar across his face) leapt onto stage, the talking died to whispers.

Astrid Greengrass was now staring straight at the man, all pleasantness gone from her expression.

"We open the floor to those who wish to claim their Honors!" Baldwin blared over the crowd.

Nobody stood. Fleur didn't expect anyone to. Very few families truly hunted demons anymore, choosing instead to consolidate their esoteric knowledge and their power. There was a dark minority within their ranks who had made deals with the very demons they were supposed to fight. She took a glance at some of the men and women sitting in stony silence.

Baldwin looked almost bored. "And now we open the floor to those who wish to claim grievances!" he shouted again.

There hadn't been a true grievance claimed in a very long time.

A woman near the back of the hall stood and mumbled incoherently about some artifact that had been stolen from her family in Tel Aviv, but no one paid her any heed.

Trembling from anticipation, Fleur stood. Everyone in the hall turned to her, but she didn't back down. A slight sheen of sweat was visible on her brow in the harsh white light but it made her no less lovely.

She scanned the crowd yet again, feeling rather displeased at the way some of the men and women were eying her body.

"I claim a grievance from Malfoy!" she said, loud and clear.

It might have been her imagination, it might have been the pills she had taken, but she thought she felt the sudden grip Elder Malfoy had over his Canestaff.

Astrid drew in a sharp breath. Baldwin looked amused, rather than displeased.

Of course, no one knew the contents of her grievance, or they would be a fair bit more serious.

"Ten years ago, my family was slaughtered at the behest of the Malfoy family."

And all hell chose to break loose.

A dark brown spell from somewhere within the crowd rocketed towards her, but Fleur watched the nameless woman draw her wand, watched her lips move and watched the spell leave her Code.

With a single smooth motion that no amount of training should have given a girl of fourteen, she whipped her wand against the spell and it splashed harmlessly, dissipating.

It was highly against decorum for fighting to break out in the Quorum, but Fleur expected no less.

Lucius Malfoy bared his teeth at her and she gave him a beatific smile. She wasn't closed to scared - she couldn't be, another side effect of her surreptitious consumption from earlier.

"I am Fleur Delacour, named so because I chose the safety of my body and the hearts of my adopted family over the dirty politics of your family, Lucius Malfoy."

The truth was apparent to the Quorum already, but she chose to make it known already.

"But it is a fitting name, nonetheless," she said, not a single ear losing a word of her medieval French. "For I am the last flower of the Sun King's Court, after you exterminated my family a decade ago."

"Lex an Praelium*****," Lucius Malfoy said quietly.

"A duel to the death!" Fleur demanded.

And now, there were snickers and ill intent from the audience.

"I am Lucius Malfoy," the man said, opting to speak in English rather than Latin. "I am of a line so proud that George the Dragonslayer is the _least_ of my ancestors. You are a schoolgirl at _Beauxbatons_." He spat the word like a curse. "It pains me to do this," he said, clearly not pained at all, "but I will put you down in the name of my house and finish your alleged family."

He, too, gracefully leapt onto the stage as Baldwin descended.

Fleur walked towards the front of the room, wary of attacks from all around her. She almost cursed Astrid Greengrass as the woman put a reassuring hand on her shoulder.

She, too, leapt onto the stage.

"_Avada Kedavra_," Lucius said softly, his cane pointed directly at her. The silver serpent at the head the cane belched a bright green spell, green as grass, at her and she stepped daintily out of its trajectory. It collided with the wall behind her, shaking the auditorium but not truly damaging it.

"But you have never ruled, Lucius Malfoy, nor have your vaunted ancestors!" Fleur cried out, baiting him. To the man's credit, he didn't seem angry, but the grip on his canestaff tightened considerably more than it already had.

Fleur watched the canestaff move in a figure eight, recognizing it as one of the binary motions behind wide-area casting. To her left, at the entrance to the auditorium, a large window let in the light of the moon, overpowering the suddenly dim candles that functioned as lighting.

Fleur's twisted her wand and jabbed it at Lucius. The wand was all too pleased to attack the man who had probably killed the woman from whence its core came and the magic sang in Fleur's veins. A long, white tongue of flame rushed through the air with an audible _snap_, disrupting the spell that Lucius had been attempting and forcing the man to summon the very chair he had been sitting on to block it.

The chair was literally vaporized by the heat of the spell and the heat of the moon. The wand sang again, tasting vengeance in the air.

They took measured steps towards on another on the stage and now Lucius's face was expressionless. His opponent was worthy.

"Mr. Malfoy," Fleur whispered as they closed in on one another, her eyes wide and her pupils dilated, her breathing coming in harsh gasps. "You killed my mother. My father. My dear grandmother. My older brother. My entire extended family. Do you know what my wand is made of, sir?"

Tears shone in her eyes and for a moment, Lucius thought the girl was insane. He shook his head.

"The branch of an elder tree and the hair of a full-blooded Veela."

The implications were clear. There was no way a wand of elder would have accepted someone without some close tie to death.

Lucius was taller than her by several inches, but Fleur held her wand aloft and pointed it above his head. He did the same with his staff and slowly, they crossed the two weapons.

An inexorable force, magic of the purest kind, pushed the pair of them back fifteen paces apiece, leaving a long, straight skid mark from Lucius to the center of the stage. Fleur didn't seem to expect differently.

"I believe, Mr. Malfoy, magic has answered my request and demands that we duel."

"In nomen honorarem******," Lucius responded, a strange sort of sadness suddenly visible on his face.

Now, the audience was entranced. It wasn't every day in which they had the opportunity to see an honor duel between a girl of fourteen and a powerful wizard. Yet, Fleur Delacour had been recognized as the equal of Lucius Malfoy by the magic of the Quorum. It could only mean that she had spoken true.

Astrid watched as the pair cautiously exchanged spells on stage, trying to find the rhythm of the spellcasting. There was a certain resignation to Malfoy's casting, almost as if-

And then, Astrid realized what was breaking the rhythm of the casting. Guilt. Shame. Remorse. It wasn't strong enough to make him a better man and to bring a new life to his magic as she had seen in her mentor. But it was enough to hold him back. And he had no idea.

Her gaze moved to the Delacour girl. An aeon ago, she had offered to adopt the girl, but the child had opted to go to a muggle orphanage, clutching nothing but a single strand of hair, the only remnant of her massacred family. Another moment when Albus Dumbledore had stood idly by. Astrid tried not to let any disappointment tarnish the man's image.

Of course, someone as beautiful as Fleur Delacour would have been adopted rather instantly. For a child of five to keep a secret for so long… Perhaps they had even thought she was a Muggleborn at Beauxbatons.

"Avada Kedavra," Lucius Malfoy tried again, the green curse traveling several times more quickly. Fleur still danced out of the way, returning fire with stream of silver darts. Lucius summoned a gust of wind which blew them back for just a moment, but as he used the Killing Curse to destroy her projectiles, Fleur used the bright white fire to destroy his.

What truly worried him at the moment though was how quick the girl was learning. She was obviously beyond talented, to be capable of lasting this long, but it seemed as though she was becoming harder to duel rather than easier. It was time to use some tricks he had picked up from his father. For a split second, Lucius contemplated that his time serving as a Death Eater had not improved his dueling even a shade.

He conjured a bunch of spiders surreptitiously with his hand behind his back even as he continued to trade spells with Fleur. "Solvite vitam," he enchanted, turned the spider into missiles of dark magic that were nearly impossible to spot and would kill in a single touch.

But Fleur had seen it all happen, her senses heightened and enhanced beyond a normal witch's by far. "Hasta Lucens," she muttered underneath her breath and from her wand, pinpoint accurate bolts of light targeted each and every conjured spider.

In the audience, Astrid frowned. She couldn't have seen the spiders - she had only sensed their creation and their enchantment. Only Albus Dumbledore, or Nicholas Flamel, or someone truly powerful beyond belief, could have had the eyesight to _see_ it happen rather than simply sense it. No mere girl could possibly have that much attention to detail - it took hundreds of years to create that sort of awareness.

On stage, Lucius was slowly closing the gap between them, realizing that while the girl had far better reaction time than him, his casting speed was far greater than hers.

_Twenty paces away_. Fleur was still quite comfortable with block his spells and returning fire, attempting to score a hit off of something the older man wasn't quite aware of, but he did have far more experience than she, even if she had cheated a bit earlier.

_Ten paces_. She could see the whites of his eyes now. Neither of them seemed capable of any sort of mind magic, as Lucius seemed to be looking for telltale signs in her casting or shades of color in her spell.

"Lumos radians," she whispered, holding her wand behind her back for a moment, then flicking it the man's direction. She hid her eyes as her wand glowed bright enough to blind him, but he too shielded his eyes, choosing the shared moment of recovery to sprint forward.

He brought his canestaff down towards her, intending to finish her through physical injury, if he wasn't capable of casting a spell that she didn't dodge, but Fleur, whose hearing had been distorted beyond belief, heard him as though he were beside her even before he reached her.

Malfoy's swing went wide as Fleur cast a quick piercing hex at his general direction, but Lucius avoided it by quickly ducking. Fleur's wand still glowed a fair bit from her poorly chosen decision, illuminating every snap of her wrist and every twist of her arm, severely disadvantaging her.

Sensing some sort of victory, Lucius bulled into her, slamming into her chest with his shoulder and winding her. They both collapsed to the ground in a heap. Fleur's wand rolled out of her suddenly-open hands even as Lucius managed to drive his canestaff through the stage.

Fleur attempted to roll away, but Lucius grabbed her by the hair, forgoing the staff and slammed his hand into her neck, choking her against the ground.

Fleur could not reach her wand with either her arms or her legs and her vision was beginning to dim rapidly as she stared into the triumphant face of Lucius Malfoy.

_Have to… kill him_.

And then, she was reminded of an old tale that she had been told to her, by her adopted mother, a devout muggle who believed in that silly book with all the great stories, about a boy named Jacob who had to wrestle an angel.

She tried to picture Lucius Malfoy as her angel - it wasn't difficult, the long, white-blond hair and the aristocratic face.

And then, she did something that hadn't been done in nearly two hundred years - something that hadn't been done since the King had been executed under the guillotine and her family had went into a state of mourning.

Fleur found that in her fist lay the Rapier de France and she drove it into the heart of Lucius Malfoy, ending his life immediately.

The fingers around her neck slackened and she pushed herself off the ground, pulled the Rapier out of the man's chest and retrieved her wand, then walked off stage, her blouse drenched in his lifeblood, and out of the hall.

**The Lord's Table**

Harry sat down gingerly between Neville and Daphne as the hall watched the rest of the first years get sorted.

"Don't reckon people are too happy with our choices," Neville whispered.

"Oy, stuff it, Longbottom," a boy with a prefect's badge whispered loudly.

Neville opted to roll his eyes in the prefect's general direction instead of shutting up. "I think my mum would be proud."

"Professor Snape is glaring at you," Harry mumbled, not taking his eyes off the sorting ceremony as Weasley, Ronald was sorted into Gryffindor. Neville didn't hear him. Daphne reached over Harry's lap and grabbed Neville's wrist, her expression between disappointed and furious.

"Where's Professor Dumbledore?" Harry suddenly asked. Daphne's eyes shot to the now-empty throne at the staff table and shrugged.

Zabini, Blaise was finally sorted into Slytherin before Professor McGonagall turned around, expecting for the Headmaster's address to commence. She, too, looked at the large chair in confusion before walking back to her seat and pursing her lips, as if she expected the Headmaster to wink into existence. Professor Flitwick leaned over and whispered into her ear and an expression of recognition was suddenly visible.

McGonagall stood yet again. "Professor Dumbledore is currently busy. He will deliver his start of term speech after the feast," she declared, then sat down.

The plates on the table began to fill themselves with food and as a whole, Hogwarts began to eat. Slowly, chatter broke out amongst the students.

"Well, who would have thought _you_ would have been sorted into our house?" said Pansy Parkinson, who had taken the seat across from Harry.

Harry didn't quite know how to respond to that, so he smiled at her instead. It didn't deter her.

"We all thought that _Harry Potter_ of all people would be a shoe-in for Gryffindor."

"I think that's where the hat wanted to put me at first," he admitted.

There was far more interest in the conversation along the table now.

"So why did the Hat choose Slytherin?"

"Because every time it was about to sort me, I insisted."

"Me too," said Neville quietly. "It was dead set on putting me in Hufflepuff or Gryffindor, but I argued with it for a pretty long time."

"So you infiltrated Slytherin House," grumbled Draco Malfoy. He wasn't used to being ignored.

Daphne giggled. "I think they were following me, actually." Her expression turned rather cold. "Which is better than listening to your parents blindly about where to go."

Several students, from Pansy to Theodore Nott, took offense to that, but Daphne parried the veiled insults they fired at her with far more finesse than they expected.

Harry, tired of watching the byplay between Daphne and the rest of his house mates, looked around to the other tables. There were a bunch of glares coming from the Gryffindors on the other side of the room and even a fearful stare or two from the Hufflepuff table. Most people, from all houses, were watching him with undisguised interest.

He absentmindedly ate a bit more and listened to his housemates share information about their childhoods.

"Of course, I'm going to be on the Quidditch team. My father says it's a crime if I don't play for Slytherin, I'm _that_ good," Malfoy bragged.

"You play Quidditch, Potter?" Malfoy asked rather suddenly.

Harry looked up from his steak and kidney pie. "What was that?"

"Are you hard of hearing or something? Do you play _Quidditch_, Potter?"

"No." Harry went back to eating, but Malfoy wasn't done.

"What type of wizard doesn't play Quidditch?" Draco smirked at him. Harry shrugged and attempted, for the second time, to get back to eating.

"All that muddy blood in you must be…" Malfoy trailed off as Daphne and Neville glared. Harry was angry, but he chose to attack his food violently rather than rise to the bait.

Before long, the majority of the first year students knew that Harry Potter wasn't very talkative, though he did seem to like treacle tarts a fair bit.

"That's enough sugar, Harry," Daphne said, swatting his hand as Harry reached for yet another one. Neville chuckled.

"She can be unbearable, mate. Choose your battles wisely."

Daphne glared at him and Harry chose that moment to grab another and put it onto his plate.

"I saw that, Harry."

"Too late, took it, have to eat it now." But then all the food vanished.

Dumbledore had thrown open the gates of the Great Hall, a somber expression upon his face. All conversation stopped. The old man's eyes traced up the Slytherin table until he found who he was looking for.

"Draco Malfoy, would you please come with me."


	13. Aftermath

Author's Note: Yes, new chapter is a Thing.

It's been a long time. I shouldn't have left you~

I'm here. Let the waves (of reviews? ;3) come crashing down, guys.

**Kaleidoscope**

They sat across from one another. The younger glared fiercely and the older wore an expression of intense sadness.

"Your father and I had many disagreements, Draco, but please accept my condolences for your loss."

"Liar," Draco mouthed. "Liar!" he roared. "What did you do to him?" he half-shouted, half-begged. Dumbledore _had_ to have killed the man. There was no one else powerful enough. No one who's blood was more pure. No one who could have wanted to kill the man.

"Your father made many enemies over the years, most of which Lord Voldemort protected him from."

Draco flinched.

"Lord Voldemort, however, has little to no knowledge of the thousands of alliances and societies that grew, rose and fell in our world's tumultuous past. All he possesses is an uncanny knack of protecting himself and those who would serve him."

Draco flinched again, then paled. "Is?" he wondered incredulously.

"I do not believe he has expired yet."

Draco stared at him in horror. "Did You-Know-Who kill my father?"

Dumbledore shook his head. "When Voldemort fell a decade ago, your father decided that he would traverse the path of the straight and narrow. You had been born recently and Narcissa's family had been gutted by a war no one truly wanted to fight but, rather, a war everyone chose to participate in. Your father fought a battle on very many fronts during that time, desperately trying to build a structure of support from within both the Death Eaters and an institution of great power known as the Mage's Association."

Draco frowned, puzzled, but Dumbledore was not finished.

"If one could be left to believe that Wizarding Britain is backward in its long preservation of traditions which harm even its oldest members-"

Draco's face hardened and Dumbledore sighed, but ignored it.

"The Association would be considered both draconian and unnecessary. It is said that to walk the path of a mage is to walk the path of death itself. Your father walked this path, gathering allies and friends alike whose combined power would be capable of protecting him from any other allies who turned on him, including Voldemort. His first priority was always his family."

A pair of teeth clenched.

"But he gave no thought to the families of other men and women. One of the final atrocities he committed to confirm an alliance was the wholesale massacre of the last line of French nobility."

Draco's eyes widened and he opened his mouth to protest.

"He killed every last member but a single young girl and left her with a thirst of vengeance so great that she had the willpower to run him through with a sword."

"Who is she?"

Dumbledore shook his head.

"Who is she?"

"We will speak more of this matter later. I shall call for you when I believe the time is correct." Dumbledore snapped his fingers and a house elf crackled into existence for the purpose of guiding Draco back to the Slytherin dormitories.

Dumbledore finished a letter he had been composing and then left his office for the Great Hall.

**Beyond Right Now**

It was three weeks before Dumbledore called Harry back into his office for a meeting that lasted more than just ten minutes. Dumbledore noted that the similarity between Harry and Draco Malfoy was rather pronounced, especially since the death of the elder Malfoy. But there was a certain thirst in Harry that worried Dumbledore, beyond the simple need to gain knowledge or prove himself. Harry Potter craved, if not power over others, power over his own fate much like he had in his youth.

Worse yet, Harry had inherited a certain type of intelligence from Lily - it wasn't quite the ability to memorize a huge amount of knowledge and apply it as most of the more decorated graduates of Hogwarts possessed - it was the ability to put together and test theories of dramatically fundamental (and overlooked) aspects of magic. Harry was under no bias when it came to interpreting magic, treating every spell as an equal. But he was also under no morality system taught to the children of wizards from a young age. When Dumbledore had given a rapid fire explanation of the unnaturalness of the Killing Curse's arithmancy, Harry had not been repulsed in the least.

When Dumbledore had cast it on a small transfigured chair as a demonstration, Harry had looked pensive more than hateful, his eyes ruby and midnight.

And then Harry had asked if he could attempt the spell. Dumbledore refused and Harry nodded, but Dumbledore knew that he had no intention to obey.

It didn't worry Dumbledore too much. He hadn't put much stock into the authority figures of his time when he had been young either. He just hoped that Harry wouldn't have to face the same trials he did before the boy built his morality from the remains of his fate. He tried to ignore the possibility that Harry would turn against decency.

Today, Dumbledore had prepared a special lesson - a basic introduction to alchemy. A large blackboard obscured Dumbledore's bookcases, covered with complicated symbols and equations, each of them explained to the best of his ability. He let Harry peruse them and copy them down slowly as he penned his opinion on centaur relations to the Ministry of Magic.

Finally, Harry had copied the notes and was now pondering the eight problems which Dumbledore had left on the board. He intentionally made the last three impossible to solve based on the knowledge he had provided.

Sure enough, Harry began frowning after ten minutes of work.

"Professor?"

Dumbledore nodded. "Yes, Harry?"

"Is there a piece of information missing in problem seven? There's a no way to derive the free energy from the ley line without knowing either the speed and direction of the ambient atmospheric magic."

Dumbledore looked alarmed for a moment glanced at Harry's paper, before drawing his breath sharply.

"I'll explain it in a second. Can you tell me how you came to your conclusion on problem six?"

Harry nodded. "That one was hard, but I noticed the answer was an expansion on spell quality. I didn't know the number of runes in the Norse language, but I do know that no matter the quantity was, taking a single rune out of the alphabet would have one of two results - to decrease the ratio of the spell's quality by a unit. But since I'm unable to divide without dividing by zero, that means that the I know the quality value has to be one, and then it doesn't matter-"

"What the number of runes is. That is a rather creative way of solving the problem."

Dumbledore explained how to derive energy constants without utilizing ley lines, but his mind was on the Philosopher's Stone the entire time. There might have been no way to know how many runes were in the Flamel rune alphabet, but…

But he wouldn't waste his time on idle dreams. He was but a mortal man, doomed to die. He wasn't quite sure if he would be comfortable with the idea of owning a Philosopher's Stone anyway.

He finished explaining the seventh and eighth problem and dismissed Harry with another book - on basic Atlantean alchemical theory.

"Professor, before I go…"

Dumbledore nodded for him to continue.

"I'd like to make good on your offer for me to wander the streets of London."

Dumbledore smiled. "I'm sorry to say that I will not be providing you with transportation. But you have my blessing to procure any means you wish. Your father was a fantastic flyer and some magical beasts might not be adverse to the idea of ferrying you."

_Another challenge, then._

He wandered through the corridors back to Slytherin House and waved a pass that he had gotten from Professor Dumbledore at the patrolling caretaker, who sneered at him.

"The Greatest of the Hogwarts Four," he said to a portrait.

The large stone wall opened to the damply lit common room, which was warm and cozy despite being under the lake.

Daphne and Neville were seated in front of the fire, sneaking softly. Malfoy sat alone at a small coffee table reading a book with illustrations of elements. When Harry passed the boy, he noticed the book had a nasty smell to it, as if someone had spilled something onto it.

Harry placed himself between the two and Daphne poked his stomach.

"How was your meeting with Dumbledore?"

Malfoy looked up at her sharply, then realized that she was talking to Harry and turned back to his book.

Harry shrugged. "He taught me a bit of alchemy."

Now the nearest eight or nine people looked up at _him_.

Daphne's eyes widened. "There's _no_ way."

Harry nodded and showed the book to her.

"Harry?"

Harry looked up at Neville.

"That's really, really, really really, _really_ illegal. Without a permit at least."

Harry stared. "He never mentioned that to me."

"Also, it's really difficult, at least according to mom," Daphne said. "She says that it's nearly impossible to kill an alchemist holed up in a place they've warded, because of how many options an alchemist has."

"She probably has quite a bit of experience in _that_," Neville said quietly. Daphne looked around, glaring at some fifth year who was still eavesdropping, then nodded mutely.

"She kills people?" Harry asked, mildly surprised.

"Only people who deserve it," Daphne said. "She's part of some organization for mages. They're supposed to be powerful, but Dumbledore's just as competent. They're part of the reason why people aren't supposed to learn alchemy. If they got wind of that, they'd try to kill you or something."

"Would you mom try to kill me?" Harry asked, alarmed.

"No. She's Dumbledore's student. She's never been really well liked at the Mage's Association anyway. But most likely they'll try to recruit you. It runs a sort of university type program for graduates of Hogwarts and people around the world who are really good at magic."

"Never heard of them," Neville said.

Harry shook his head, but in the process of doing so, he noticed that Draco's eyes were dead set on Daphne. Draco realized that Harry was looking and immediately turned back to his book.

"What's his deal?" Harry whispered.

Daphne frowned. "His father died. My mum saw. It was several weeks ago."

Harry thought it was better not to ask how.

**1-800-MURDERS**

There were around fifteen places in the world that you could go to get someone killed with complete reliability. The assassination business was represented heavily by Europe and the Middle East, but they were on all the continents.

Not that anyone who knew where to procure these services didn't have either the money or the power to travel across continents easily.

Today, Nicholas was in the capital city of Albania, Tirana.

Nicholas took a tentative step into the little Japanese Fusion, Umai. Everyone inside was distinctly not Japanese. He walked up to the counter. "Table for one, back rooms."

A leggy waitress led him to a campy bamboo booth and he was given a menu.

"A sashimi lunch special, please," he said, handing the menu right back.

He waited in silence for several minutes before a meal of vague freshness was plopped in front of him.

He ate quickly and left two pieces of tuna on his plate. He split the green faux-wasabi in half and left them on different sides of the plate.

The waitress ducked her head back in and collected his meal.

"Would you like anything else, sir?" she eyed the finished meal with sudden trepidation.

"Yes, another one please."

In several moments, the door opened and the owner of the restaurant slipped in and took a seat across from him. The man did a double take when he saw Nicholas, shooting to his feet and drawing a silenced pistol. His ring gleamed red on his finger, an emergency portkey about to activate, but Nicholas snapped his fingers and a blue light washed downwards, trapping the man. The gun's ammunition leaked out of its barrel as molten lead.

"What do you want, Mr. Flamel." The voice was hoarse and defeated.

Nicholas smiled. "I'm not here to arrest you. I'm here to place a hit. On Dumbledore."

The man looked even more crestfallen than before.

Half an hour later, Nicholas left the restaurant with a full stomach and a smile on his face. He walked into a back alley and winked out of existence. But if someone had been there to see him speak into his pendant, they would have very clearly caught the words, "It's done, Albus."


	14. This is Hogwarts

Author's Note: Prepare the ion cannons. A Lungs has been spotted in the area, and he's about to write. WE MUST STOP HIM. Or something. Yeah. Whatever.

I have a treat for all of you in this chapter - a little bit of a battle!

I think all of you have misinterpreted Flamel's actions at the end of the last chapter. Dumbledore doesn't realize that Voldemort's under his nose - he's just sacrificing some of his safety to draw him out, when really, Voldemort knows about it already. There are very many entities who would love to have the Stone and some of them are probably capable of breaking into banks and stuff. These entities would probably not be as brazen as to break into Hogwarts.

Guys you should all go read my new fic or something. There's not much love for it.

Also, please review! I do love them very much, and most of you know I respond to every single one of them, with extra info and spoilers and magical theory in the way that I do.

**Kaleidoscope**

He cracked the book open with a sort of reverence that he had for very few things, for his name was Harry Potter and he was born to be irreverent.

So when he paid his respects, the target was probably deserving.

_Translitera_ by Nicholas Flamel, known to the world as the Sorceror's Alphabet. Considered the Holy Grail of latter-day alchemy, each copy was copied tediously by hand from teacher to student and Dumbledore had given Harry his own copy to recreate.

His eyes spun the world into a tapestry of red and he began to read the text, full of Dumbledore's nearly clairvoyant comments in both parentheses and the margins.

The old man sat across from him, watching him copy silently.

"I, too, was a boy of eleven years when I had my first apprenticeship, Harry. Not alchemy, but history. The greatest name in my day was Bathilda Bagshot, still living to this day. She taught me that the truest work is that in which you examined every angle. Perhaps it is intuitive to me nowadays, but that advice was the best I had received to that point in my life."

Harry nodded, as his mind pieced together the equations which he could understand easily and pushed at the ones which were more difficult.

"Is it still too difficult?" Dumbledore queried, after an hour passed in a flash and Harry had copied another ten pages.

Harry shook his head in the negative. That was a lie, but he would work at it until Alchemy was as easily spoken a language to him as English.

So he turned back to the first page and began reading Dumbledore's spindly handwriting again.

_To understand the whispers of Alchemy, the student must learn that even if such magicks are beyond his reckoning, the student must first simulate then traverse the fractals which govern this universe to infinite iterations._

**Sky High**

It was something really silly when it started and Harry regretted it almost immediately.

"Up!"

The chorus of voices rang across the field as the group of children stared a selection of rickety brooms down.

Harry's flew into his hand and he caught it deftly. He looked at the object with a mild sort of surprise. Next to him, Neville grunted as the broom poked him in the soft underneath his shoulder. Daphne's broom rolled over and jumped halfheartedly, then lay still. Mostly everyone had received nonfunctional reactions and Madame Hooch, their instructor for the day, rolled her eyes.

"You have to put some feeling into it!" she shouted, her voice somewhat hoarse already. "Up!" she shouted again. "Your broom is not a toy. It is among the most powerful and difficult enchantments prepared by wizardkind to ensure that even children could command them!"

After several moments, the majority of the students managed to get their brooms into their hands and they mounted the broomsticks.

"Now on the count of three, kick off of the ground. One! Two-"

Instantly, Neville shot off into the distance.

"Shit! Shit! Shit!" he screamed.

Harry and Daphne both let go of their brooms and raised their wands, aiming at the rapidly disappearing blob in the sky.

"Arresto Momentum!" they shouted.

They both missed.

"Shit!" Harry echoed. Daphne, who had clamped her broom between her legs, rocketed off the ground to save Neville, but she wasn't very good with her broom either and ended up spiraling haphazardly.

"God damn it, Potter!" Malfoy screamed, his face white with some sort of fear that Harry had never seen before. "Get off your ass!" He too, took to the air.

Harry shook his head in disbelief, scooped his broom off the floor and followed.

It was like discovering magic all over again. The broom's controlling was so easy and natural to him. He and Malfoy surged past Daphne, who seemed to be safe at the moment and they cut through the air with a hiss.

They appeared on both sides of Neville and Harry kicked Neville's broom handle upwards, all of them missing a stone gargoyle by a hair.

"What are you-" Neville shouted, then gulped as Draco grabbed onto his broom handle and steered it in the direction of the ground. Harry chose to follow the pair, flying right beneath Neville's feet as to catch the boy if he fell.

They made it onto the ground safely and Daphne touched the ground several seconds after them.

Hooch was speechless, so she ended the lesson there and marched off, probably to inform Professor Dumbledore of her speechlessness.

"Why'd you do it?" Harry asked, genuinely curious. Draco Malfoy seemed like the type to jeer when Neville crashed.

Draco clamped his jaw shut and turned to walk away, but Daphne grabbed him by the elbow. "Why'd you follow us up?"

Draco stopped moving, then opened his mouth and closed it again. Of course, it was only too easy to confess to a pretty girl. "He would have died. Can't let him die."

And then Daphne wished that she had thought before she stopped him, because now she felt terrible. Neville, however, pushed past her.

"Draco. Friends." He bowed.

Draco Malfoy bowed back and Daphne believed that she had witnessed a change in fate.

**Rise and Shine**

Harry woke up before light in the morning lounging on a stuffy armchair with an aching back. There were three other students who were as diligent as he in the pursuits of magic still present. Draco was still awake and still studying _Charms Which I Have Known and Loved_ by Tiberius Black. Daphne, possessing the same discipline, was still going through her copy of _A Thousand Magical Herbs and Fungi_. Neville had long fallen asleep - albeit in a more comfortable position than Harry had. An unidentified textbook functioned as the other boy's pillow.

"Morning," Harry muttered, rubbing his eyes. Of course, Harry knew better than to even ask Dumbledore to let the copy of _Translitera_ out of his office, but Harry did have around thirty five pages of copied notes from sitting in Dumbledore's office once every week or so.

Draco looked up and nodded at him. Daphne made a grunting noise which he had never heard come out of a girl before, let alone an eleven year old girl.

"How long before we can have breakfast?" Harry asked the pair of them.

"Three," they both chimed out in unison. Harry nodded and went back to his studying. He mulled over the happy dream which he had in the past two hours or so.

"Wake me up for breakfast, Harry." Daphne shifted, put her book down and closed her eyes.

Harry and Draco stared at one another for a while.

"What makes you tick, Potter?"

Harry contemplated the question, unsure of how to answer.

"For the longest time, it was the pride I had in my family. Then, my father died and now, my energy comes from not wanting to die. From wanting to keep my mother alive."

"And other people too, right?" Harry asked. Neville had insisted that Draco be let into their group of friends. Over the course of a month, Harry and Daphne had both come to appreciate the more quiet and more quietly vindictive version of Draco Malfoy.

Draco nodded.

"How about revenge? On whoever killed your father?" Harry frowned, trying to read the emotions on Draco's face without the help of his heritage and the red-and-black strands. They were rapidly moving into a more taboo topic.

"Whoever did it, I'm going to duel. I promised on his grave. Whether or not Dumbledore tells me who did it. Maybe he had a good reason to do it. I'm older than I was - I know my father wasn't the nicest man. But this is my honor. This is what Professor Dumbledore calls my integrity."

Harry thought that Draco misunderstood what Dumbledore meant by integrity, but he made no show of the emotion.

Daphne cracked her eyelids open and looked from one to the other. Neville let out yet another light snore.

"So answer my question now, Potter."

Harry nodded. "I want to know why. I want to know why Voldemort targeted me. I want to know why he killed my parents. But more than that, I want to know."

Draco understood.

"I could have been sorted differently," Harry said, smiling. "I've always wanted to know. But I've always wanted to know better a little more."

"You're very profound, and really very loud," Daphne said, goodnaturedly.

Harry smiled and went back to reading his notes to keep himself from disturbing the girl further. There would be time to talk at breakfast.

"Wake me up too, Harry," Draco said.

**We Must Go On**

Harry made the journey to Dumbledore's office after eating breakfast with the few people who were up at seven in the morning on a Saturday. Surprisingly, only Daphne had procrastinated on her actual schoolwork and so Neville and Draco had to help her through it as soon as possible before they enjoyed the day on the lake outside.

Harry had learned long ago that not many people were called to Dumbledore's office - only the most promising of the students. He wasn't too surprised that his friends were in the office once in a while, as well as a handful of Ravenclaw students and one Hermione Granger from Gryffindor.

None of them had the bad luck of being in the room when Albus Dumbledore was being attacked by assassins.

"Licorice Sticks!" Harry called out, walking up the spiral staircase. Dumbledore was, indeed, slowly consuming a licorice stick and grading papers.

"I'm currently lightening Professor McGonagall's workload, Harry. These are NEWT theses which some seventh years have written up as drafts. Would you like to get to work?"

It was perhaps a blessing that Dumbledore kept _Translitera_ locked away in a highly warded closet, because during the time which Harry moved to the seat and Dumbledore moved to unlock the closet, the windows in room exploded into a shower of glass.

Harry's eyes flashed red and black almost involuntarily as Dumbledore drew his wand faster than Harry could comprehend and transfigured the glass into water.

With another wave of his wand, the water gathered in front of him and the temperature rose to boiling.

"He's to your right, Professor!" Harry shouted, realizing that there were strands of magic twisting around _something_.

Apparently, Dumbledore could see the man as well, because he instantly drenched the intruder with the boiling hot water, eliciting a long scream.

Harry parried a nasty looking off-blue curse which was slated to make contact with Dumbledore's back, which had come from the spiral staircase.

"Get down," Dumbledore whispered, just loud enough for Harry to hear.

Harry dove under a table full of possibly irreplaceable instruments and there was a loud bang and yet another scream as another assailant was incapacitated.

Harry felt the wand against his back too late.

"Surrender your wand and no one has to die, Dumbledore!" someone shouted, in a clearly Mediterranean accent.

"Oh dear," Dumbledore said, sounding completely unworried. Dumbledore put his wand on the table. "It appears as though I shouldn't have been quite so enthusiastic about ordering my own assassination."

"We're here for the Elder Wand, Sorceror," the man grunted, his eyes darting between his partners, one of which was still writhing on the ground and the other who was slumped on the stairs.

"Well, it's on my desk," Dumbledore said, his hands unmoving.

Harry turned and looked into the now visible man's eyes. "_You want it so bad that you're going to lunge for it immediately_," Harry said, twisting strands which he recognized to be desire.

The man jumped at the desk, but Dumbledore was clearly quicker, summoning a wall of iron with a wave of his hand.

The man slammed headfirst into the thick sheet of metal and dropped to the ground, moaning.

"Excellent, Harry. Now, will you please leave the room. I do not torture people, but that makes interrogation no less unpleasant. I expect you back after lunchtime."


	15. Seeing is Believing

Author's Note: Two updates in two days? Can it be? Could I be on a roll?

This drama is far from over. Huge reveals this chapter.

An "iteration" in relation to a Fractal, is how complex a fractal gets. So if a fractal stretches to infinity, the infinite iteration would be the point where it repeats itself to infinity. The first iteration is the first shape that the fractal takes before it repeats itself in some way. (This will become relevant a little bit later, as a segment title.)

**Kaleidoscope**

Nicholas and Kischur were two sides of the same coin - or perhaps closer to two sides on a five-face die.

So when they met, there was usually good natured ribbing about the other's path in life from at least one of them.

"When you're around for an eternity, you begin to value little more than the knowledge in your brain, I think," Nicholas said, placing his words carefully.

Kischur, still a general at the Mage's Association and still a collector of trinkets of immeasurable power, scoffed.

"Is there really anything that you _have_ to use something as boorish as a sword or a staff for?" Nicholas only carried a wand because it reminded him of the days when he walked the halls of Hogwarts and the long-dead friends he made in the institution.

They had this conversation once every decade or so. "I like pretty things. So do you." Beautiful, deadly, powerful - those were the things Kischur liked. That was his standard for 'pretty'.

Nicholas frowned. His face could not be called pretty, except in the phrase 'pretty average'. He wore no glamours, didn't age beyond a very average forty years of age and walked as though he were as old as he looked. "My wife is not a thing."

Kischur thought the man would take offense and he did, so he chalked it up to a victory. "I hear you placed a hit on Albus Dumbledore."

Nicholas guffawed. "If I wanted to hit Albus Dumbledore, I'd do it personally, as would you. And he would probably escape. That student of mine was the most slippery of the lot."

Kischur blinked. "You told them that he had one of the Keystones."

Nicholas nodded. "He asked me to. He has held the Wand of Elder for long enough so that a Third of the Fractal we call Materials is burned as a straight line onto his back."

"Body modification was never really my thing."

Nicholas nodded again. "He still possesses the Blaze."

Kischur looked distinctly uncomfortable about the idea of that. "I still don't understand how the flesh of a man could be passed on. It's disgusting. I hope I never have a student dedicated enough to cut off a slice of my arm after I die and implant it in his own."

"Merlin always did things differently."

Nicholas was among the few living beings who had seen the Sorceror of the First Fractal, so Kischur didn't question him.

"He's always been proof - proof that even a single circuit of magic, used properly, could be just as possible as the pools and pools of power spread all over our bodies. Dumbledore is the consumate wizard. He is a wise man, who won't walk the path of a Magus and mutilate his morality for more knowledge."

Kischur's shrug was more expressive than Nicholas', but it still conveyed the same sort of tiredness which the other man held. "I'm convinced that, in the end, the only way to find where it starts is to possess all Five of the Magicks. Merlin is dead, so that's one secret we might never unravel. No matter how many people are born with my rune, no one since has learned to traverse the Kaleidoscope. An man in the millions can unite the Hallows, but none of those men are foolish enough to do so - your student included. A man in a million can understand Alchemy, but even fewer choose to study your art. And that little chit who holds the Fifth in her palm lost her mind before she was even an adult."

"Pessimism is unbecoming. Someone will come along. It's not written, but probability is a persuasive argument. We've looked, in our own way, for longer than two thousand years, combined. It has to happen, at some point."

"I'll believe it when I see it." And Kischur had seen very many things.

**Blood Runs Deep**

Draco Malfoy walked into the Headmaster's study with that ever present sense of unease which had plagued him since his father's death.

Someone else was in the office, a woman he recognized was sitting where he normally sat.

Astrid Greengrass scooted to the right and conjured a rather comfortable looking chair for the boy.

"Mr. Malfoy," she said gently.

"What it is?" he finally asked.

"You're hear to discuss my father." His eyes hardened and his breath quickened.

"Astrid has retrieved your father's weapon," Dumbledore said.

Draco's shaking hands took the canestaff from the woman.

"Did she?" he started almost with a hint of nonchalance, but then his voice shook and a sob very nearly broke loose from his throat. Draco quelled it by biting down on his lip, hard. This staff was something he was _never_ allowed to touch.

Dumbledore drew in a sharp breath. "Fifteen hundred years ago, Sir Gawain of Arthur's Court sired a child during his trial in the palace of the Green Knight. The child was assumed to belong to the Knight until he grew hair in his third month. The white-blond heritage was an especially powerful gene that even magic could not hide and the mother of the child was executed in the name of honor. The child was sent to France, where he grew to be a man strong of arm and strong of magic. His ancestor returned to England in the Battle of Hastings, firing an arrow into the eye of King Harold the second. Several generations down the line, the Malfoy family reacquired an old heirloom that belonged to St. George, a forefather of Sir Gawain, the Serpent Staff, which you now hold in your hands."

Draco tightened his grip on the staff.

"Throughout history, the Malfoys have supported efforts spearheaded by those who wished to continue Salazar Slytherin's legacy of honoring the pure of blood. Before the name was taken, however, the family championed causes that spoke to the better nature of humanity."

Draco frowned.

"My dear friend Abraxas, may he rest in peace, saw the light and attempted to convince the members of his family to return to a tradition that was more open following the defeat of Gellert Grindelwald, allying himself with the likes of Edgar Bones and Charlus Potter. He was finally killed when his son slipped him a deadly poison. On what we call the Darkest Night, your father invited Lord Voldemort into his home and Abraxas summoned Edgar, Charlus and myself to do battle with one of the best students that Hogwarts has ever produced. Our combined efforts resulted in the first death of Voldemort, who was then still recognizable as my charming half-blooded student, Tom Riddle."

Draco's eyes widened in disbelief.

"In that night, Abraxas Malfoy summoned his legendary brand Fiendfyre as I summoned the Blaze and we burned Voldemort into ashes. Yet the battle was not done - Voldemort found a way to revive himself in the space of a month, proving to his followers that he was nothing short of immortal. How he cheated death is still beyond my knowledge," Albus admitted. "Edgar and Charlus both sustained wounds that were untreatable and all three of them succumbed to death within an hour of one another. Lucius Malfoy escaped the Manor with your mother and when Lord Voldemort returned, he rejoined the man who had all but killed his father. Perhaps that was his greatest sin."

Draco was now angry. "My father was a brilliant man, if not a good man. You don't have to tell me about what he did wrong."

Albus shook his head. "He became a good man. Following the most recent death of Lord Voldemort, he escaped Azkaban with his money and influence in the Wizengamot, leaving a large portion of his less well positioned comrades to rot in the prison. His finally act of carnage was ordering the slaughter of an entire family, two years after the death of the Dark Lord. And then, he found it within himself to repent. He married Narcissa Malfoy, who had born him a child that he had attempted to assassinate four times and became a family man. For the past ten years, he has done nothing, watching the tides of change wax and wane in the Wizengamot, choosing not to vote on the majority of issues. But tonight, he was challenged to a duel. The fourteen year old scion of the last family he had massacred rose from the woodwork and ended his life in a startling display of magical prowess."

"Who was he?"

Dumbledore shook his head. "Do you want to recycle revenge, Draco Malfoy?"

"For my father. Yes. I do," he spat.

It was Dumbledore's turn to be angry. "It pains me that the grandson of Abraxas Malfoy would choose a path of this sort, at the age of eleven. I thought better of you."

"You don't even know me."

"But I knew your father. And I knew your grandfather. They found it," Dumbledore paused. "They found it within themselves to _let go_. To let go of their bloodlust and honor their besmirched name."

Malfoy was cowed.

"For all my disagreement with the man, in the end, I learned to respect him for letting go," Astrid whispered, finally breaking the silence that had descended upon them like a tidal wave.

Draco stood up and walked out of the office, his emotions conflicted.

Dumbledore called out a final string of words which gave Draco pause. "Come back again, Draco. Come back to learn. I may disagree with your intentions, but it is my job to give you the tools, young Malfoy. It was my own mentor who had said that the strongest wand in incapable hands is still just a toy."

**The First Iteration**

Neither Daphne nor Neville truly enjoyed dueling much, though they had been brought up to understand how important a duel was to their culture.

Draco understood the duel as the focal point of his honor, especially following his father's death.

Harry's interaction was something different - similar to why so very many muggleborns were competent duelists. There was no baggage. There was no true appreciation for the history and culture behind the duel and there was no nervousness behind every motion taken, no family to disappoint, no parents to weep over a corpse on the platform. Even if this was just for experimental purposes.

So when Harry crossed his wand against Draco's old but shiny staff, he felt nothing but excitement. Daphne expression would not have been very different had Draco brought along a knife to a fist fight.

It was two in the morning and they were in an abandoned classroom. Neville had read about and managed to perform a silencing spell on the door and the walls, but it seemed as though he was exerting considerable amounts of concentration keeping the spell from collapsing on itself.

"Hold it," Daphne said. "Neville, the easiest shape to hold is a cone, or at least something triangular I think. There's a reason it's a Cone of Silence and not a Cube of Silence."

"I have never heard that phrase before," Neville said, bewildered, but as he twisted his wand held aloft, he was noticeably more relaxed.

"Don't miss too much and we won't get caught," Harry said, the barest hint of a smile on his face. Draco looked far too somber for such a good time.

Neither of the combatants could cast silently, so Harry had the distinct advantage of being able to read Draco's lips by flashing his Kaleidoscope, however incomplete it was. He had decided that he wouldn't play with Draco's mind, which was far too easy.

It was as though the strands of the other boy's emotions were calling out to him. There had been something intoxicating about commanding the assassin in Dumbledore's office, which Harry knew he shouldn't get used to.

Lost in thought about a policeman he had nearly sent out into the street to be hit by a car before he discovered Hogwarts, a jet of light clipped him in the shoulder and sent him sprawling.

"That staff is marvelous," Daphne remarked, realizing that Draco was doing his best to keep his magic in check and use playground-fight spells. "I can't believe you're not paying attention, Harry."

Harry could scarcely believe it either.

The boys traded several rounds of decidedly non-lethal spells, before Harry had a rather brilliant idea. If Albus Dumbledore could conjure a wall of iron, why couldn't he do something similar?

Harry pointed his wand at Draco and gave an experimental slash.

Draco looked at the phoenix-feather implement pointed at him, a tad confused, before his hand smacked into a clump of nondescript scrap metal and he dropped his staff. Harry tagged him with a bunch of sparks as the boy grabbed for his staff on the ground.

Neville nearly dropped his cone of silence as the chunk of metal fell to the ground with a thud rather than a clang, narrowly missing Draco's foot.

"What the hell was that?" Neville asked, clearly impressed. "Was that _alchemy_?" he asked.

Harry shook his head. "No. Well, yes. Sort of. It's more like… summoning something that doesn't exist. But it's not really conjuration, because I'm not making it. It's pulling it from what I believe metal to be, but it's not converting air into metal either."

They had stopped casting spells at one another.

"Where do you think it comes from, then?" Daphne wondered, inspecting the metal. "_Finite Incantatem_!" she cried, putting quite a bit of feeling into the spell. It splashed off the metal, as it tended to splash off non-magical objects.

"It's solid and real," Draco said, barely believing his eyes. "This is totally alchemy," he said, with some sort of awe.

Harry shook his head again, for once incapable of explaining the spell process. "It's not. Alchemy takes one thing and turns it into another. Conjuration takes something from my mind and turns it into something. Alchemy wouldn't be affected by the de-spell, a conjuration would. This metal comes from somewhere, just not my mind and not from alchemy or transfiguration."

"But it didn't move through space. So you didn't summon it. I think it's safe to say that there was never a slab of metal exactly like this in this spot, during any point in history. So you didn't summon it through time."

The three boys looked at Daphne like she was insane.

"What?" She asked, suddenly uncomfortable. "My mom does crazy things with her magic. And she says there's a ton of stuff that bends space and time in the department of mysteries."

Harry took it in stride. "So it came from somewhere. I don't know where I summoned it from. And it just winked into existence. I know I didn't spontaneously create it - that's impossible. Absolutely impossible, it violates nearly every law of magic." Harry paused. "That I know of," he added as a corollary.

"Of course you didn't. You would know if you were Merlin, I think," Daphne said. "But it had to come from somewhere, right?"

The four of them wracked their brains. Neville even let the cone of silence drop, miming a shush motion to them.

"My Father," Draco began, looking sorry to say the words, "used to say that the Executioner's Veil, which they killed Loxias Black and Godelot Lestrange with- He said that it didn't kill people but dropped them into another world."

"Parallel worlds?" Daphne asked, with something akin to humor. Her voice took on a strange pitch out of imitation. "Where do vanished things go?"

All three of them, being fans of the Unicorn Tamer Havelock Sweeting, a warrior of the Light and a philosopher on the side, got the reference, and chimed, "Into nonbeing, that is to say, everything!" with the proper campy cheer.

Daphne shook her head. "What if the Vanishing spell just dumped your object into someone else's world. As if whatever we vanished really wasn't our problem. So at some point, someone vanished a hunk of metal. And then Harry summoned it."

She contemplated this, then shook her head. "No. Too complicated. Far too complicated. This doesn't need parallel worlds to exist at all. Someone could have, over the course of history, or even just a moment ago, vanished a bunch of metal. Harry just remade it instantly."

Harry nodded. That seemed right. That seemed to be something that happened, sort of. He was still more sold on the parallel worlds theory than he'd argue with Daphne.

"Which brings us to the conclusion that you're doing something as impossible as creating it from thin air. How the hell are you doing it?"

Harry looked from Neville and Daphne, who had been friends with him since the beginning, to Draco, who had quickly grown to fill a space on the short list of people he cared about, then sighed.

"A light please?" There was a very low level of illumination from a bunch of ever-burning oil lamps, because the classrooms usually relied on daylight. The hallways used torches.

"_Lumos_." Draco's staff lit up in a pleasant white glow. Neville had the presence of mind to cast the cone of silence yet again.

Harry reached into the space where he kept his darker emotions and the world sharpened into strands of red and black.

His three friends gave a start.

"Are you a vampire?" Daphne wondered, looking clearly scared despite the conviction that Harry would never harm her was held fast.

Harry shook his head. "No. My eyes aren't actually just red. Look carefully. There's something about these, which just allows me to… do what I just did. I don't quite understand the process, myself."

Draco shone the light into his face, but the harsher glare didn't even come close to bothering him.

"There's a bug in your eye," Daphne said, looking vaguely sick.

Harry scowled. "It's not a bug. Look closely."

"It's a patch of color or something. Looks like a comma," Neville remarked.

"Professor Dumbledore calls this the Kaleidoscope. This person who was a friend of my mum, his name's Remus Lupin, says that my mum had it when she was in school and that it was more developed than mine. The Headmaster says that it's probably hereditary, and that no two have the exact same effect."

The other three were clearly fascinated.

"I knew that it wasn't a trick of the light," Daphne said, probably referring to times in which she could have sworn Harry's eyes had taken on a sinister color. "What can you do with it?"

Harry looked solemn. "I can sort of understand things better and read really fast. Most of all, I get why things happen from seeing it. It's hard to describe. If I've ever felt something before, and I see something, I'll get some sort of what the Headmaster calls an emotional print. I've gotten hurt before, so I can see that Draco's staff has hurt a lot of people. But things that I haven't done or felt or seen before, they make more sense to me when my eyes aren't activated."

Harry took a heavy breath. "And… I can kind of control people's minds."

"What?" Daphne shouted, her voice a squeak, looking from Neville to Draco. They looked equally horrified.

Harry misunderstood, believing that they were afraid of him controlling them rather than reacting to the social stigma of mind controlling curses and substances. "It's really obvious when I do it, though. You can't not notice."

Daphne groaned. "That's really, really wrong. You can't just… take someone over."

Harry looked confused. "I wouldn't do it to just anyone. There was an assassin in Dumbledore's office today who had me at wandpoint. I told him to get off of me and go for Dumbledore's wand, so he didn't end up hurting me."

"There was an assassin in Dumbledore's office?" Daphne asked, before remembering the stories her mother told about the man. "You know what? Never mind. Carry on."

But Draco looked contemplative. "Can you resist it?"

Harry shrugged. "I've never tried it on anyone who could probably resist it easily. There was this one bobby. Err, muggle auror, that is. I told him to leave me alone and he… kind of nearly walked into traffic."

Daphne gave a giggle that sounded a little bit like breaking sanity and a little bit like concern.

"Try me," Neville said. Draco looked as though the other boy had beaten him to the punch.

Harry stared. "What? No!" he cried out. "It kind of makes you crazy. For a long time."

Daphne's giggling sounded more horrified. "I think you really are a vampire and you're tricking us. Maybe my mom's going to have to kill you after all." Harry wasn't sure if she was completely joking or just half-joking.

Neville set his jaw emphatically. "I don't believe that, Harry. You may be the Boy Who Took a Killing Curse at the age of one, but when I was the same age, I was tortured with the Cruciatus. My mind is strong. Do it."

Harry stared at him long and hard, but it seemed as though the reasoning had won over both Daphne, who was too curious for her own good, and Draco, who decided that cowardice was key to continued sanity along the way.

"Just a little, then. I'm going to force you to… uh…" Harry grinned, "_pick your nose_."

This was the first time that anyone had known he had this power, and the first time anyone had actually resisted him.

The strands were immeasurably tighter than even that of the assassin's. The policeman was no comparison even to that.

Neville's finger rose to chest level, then he looked as though he had forgotten something important and put it back down. The hand came up again. He put it down again.

Neville glared at Harry, both of them trying harder and harder.

"Stop it," Daphne said, ever the voice of reason. "Mental strain can hurt you. Whoever wins at this point, it's guaranteed to be ugly for whoever loses."

Harry nodded and eased away he hold on the strands, which felt like metallic wire digging into his consciousness at this point.

Neville let his arms rest slowly. They trembled a little. "That was really strange. It was like I wanted to do something really bad, but I knew I didn't want to do it actually. Some sort of tug-of-war."

Harry nodded. "It is. I see your emotions as strings or something, made of light. I can pull on them and you can pull back."

"If they were strings, they could probably snap," Draco said, certainly not anticipating Harry's wince.

"Yeah. So, uh… the muggle auror. When I told him to leave me alone, I kind of snapped his strands by accident."

"And?" Daphne said, fearing the answer.

"Well, he kept repeating 'nothing to see here,' to everyone who saw him, over and over again. And he did walk-"

"Into traffic."

The four of them were rather silent after that. Harry let the magic fade from his eyes.


	16. Communing with the Codes

Author's note: Shit is hitting this fan really quickly. Really really quickly. Like, so quickly. In the space of one or two chapters, pretty much.

**Kaleidoscope**

Astrid heard a strange melody in the morning. She had been poisoned yesterday, probably during a battle with Strout.

Rizo-Waal Strout was a strange man - no, he was not a man at all. It was difficult to call him a concept. The lines around him, the melody around him was a little too human, a little to easy to understand. In fact, High Zelretch and Nicholas were more complex and deep than this… little man.

He was powerful, though, and though they had joined in battle, he had escaped. It was hard to believe that this type of thing was an Apostle, let alone one of the oldest vampires that ever walked the earth.

Well, one of the oldest surviving vampires. Her forefathers had done an admirable job in matching Strout's comrades.

He named his sword the True Demon Neardark, and she had wondered why the sword wasn't fully embraced by the darkness. He had scoffed, telling her that his curse was not one which understood something as pure as the darkness. Perhaps that was why he was human. He wasn't quite as absolute as the other things she had faced in the past.

She had fought him with Blue, who was not quite as well adjusted as she was. Blue looked rather disconcerted that when the young girl had activated the Fifth Magic, the Fractal of Remove, she had failed to kill Strout instantly.

Blue was now sitting at her bedside, neither of them having spoken since the battle.

"You're young." _And foolish_, the accusation was quite clear.

Blue looked angry. "I hold the _most_ powerful magic in the world."

Astrid chuckled and pushed herself into a seated position on the bed. "Fate/Remove is only one of five, of thirty one."

Blue didn't understand. She was sixteen, after all, and this was mostly myth.

Astrid pulled a notepad off her bedside table and a cheap pen and began to sketch.

Her shaking hand drew the number 'thirty-one' in Urdu, a language she wasn't quite too familiar with.

Then she wrote in more English styles of notation, and drew a line under it, with the number three under the line.

"Fate, Fae and the World - these are the concepts that the Thirty One From the Sky are divided into. Five, Eight and Eighteen. I don't understand the significance of these numbers, except for the fact that they're almost magical but not quite. We associate magic with threes, fours, sevens and seventeens."

Blue was, at least, a good student.

"Fate/Remove is only one piece of a much larger puzzle, Blue."

Blue pushed her hair behind her shoulder and left the room, undoubtedly having been told her entire life that she was a genius, a prodigy and the most powerful magus to live. Astrid privately wondered how she managed to work with the girl, ever.

**No Peace**

It was the middle of November and despite her daily sojourn into magical knowledge, Daphne was so very bored. There was a little bit of excitement at the end of October, when someone had let a troll in by accident. Everyone in Slytherin said it was Hagrid, but the man had looked a combination of excited and confused on the staff table, while Professor Dumbledore had run off to deal with it.

It turned out that there were actually two trolls - one in the dungeons and another that had followed its leader in. The first troll was disposed off by Professor Dumbledore as he led Slytherin House from the Great Hall down to their common room with some sort of charm which either vanished or teleported the troll away.

They later found out that Professors Flitwick and Snape had quietly subdued the other troll in a girl's bathroom. There hadn't even been damage to any bathrooms, from what Daphne could see, so it was clear that the two of them were quite skilled.

This was why she was currently standing outside of Professor Snape's office, waiting for him to let her in. She had put her name on a sign in sheet that she wasn't sure that he checked to begin with - her name was the only one on the list, after all. She had to write in the date herself, considering it seemed as though only three people had been to see Snape since the beginning of the year.

She waited another five minutes before a voice called out, "Greengrass." She should have known better than to worry anyway. Snape wouldn't do something like ignoring students who had signed up for office hours, especially not ahead of time.

Snape's office, at the back of his potions classroom, was haphazardly neat. It was clear that some spills had not been cleaned and that some of the papers around on the floor were probably important, but every rare ingredient she saw on the walls were well kept and labelled meticulously. There was a collection of four mystic codes behind cabinets of thin glass. Daphne wondered if he had ever been the target of an assassination attempt and had to reach them very quickly.

Four mystic codes was quite many to keep during times of idyllic peace.

"The spellbook is Darklight, named in my fifth year, for every shadow cast by a lit candle. The glove is nameless, because it does not deserve one for its mundane function of being able to summon my wand from any nearby vicinity. The smaller of the two jewels is not actually a mystic code, but a gem given to me by an old friend who went on to Clocktower to learn High Thaumaturgy containing a fair amount of knowledge on the subject of short range weather control. The larger gem is unfinished."

Daphne gave him a questioning look.

Snape's expression was his usual, slightly sallow and didactic in equal parts. "I show every student who chooses to enter my office of their own volition those objects. They are not a point of pride as much as a point of example. Considering the usual student is here but once, to ask for a better Potions grade or to attempt to employ my understanding of the Dark Arts, these examples are important."

"My mother says you went to school during her time, Professor."

Snape nodded. "She is doing bigger and better things than brewing to teach and for profit."

Daphne wasn't quite sure if he would believe that what her mother was doing was better.

"She was one of the many students taken by the Headmaster. There were a handful from every year. Are you here because you wish for me to teach you until you catch his notice?"

Daphne nodded carefully.

Snape scoffed. "I am not a powerful Mage, nor am I particularly skilled at much other than the magic of battle and potionmaking. Considering your roots, you could do better than myself."

Daphne took a gamble. "You subdued a troll with no damage to a bathroom."

Snape looked ready to actually laugh at her. "Any teacher in this school with a degree of competence would be capable of that. I had the added benefit of Filius Flitwick's wand by my side."

Daphne shook her head. "You have Mystic Codes. Including a spellbook."

Snape looked at her as if she had disappointed him. "Your friend Longbottom's grandmother has a collection of thirty seven."

Daphne understood. Snape wasn't going to teach her as his apprentice - but he could teach her in other ways. "Can you spare any time in your day to duel with me?"

Snape stared her down, evaluating her closely. He nodded. "Saturday evenings at six, before dinner. We will duel for anywhere between five minutes and an hour, depending on your skill."

**A Fistful of Dreams**

By the first snow of December, Neville was the only one among them who wasn't consulting teachers en masse to learn things far beyond his station.

Daphne walked to the Great Hall from lessons with Snape on Saturdays and lessons with Flitwick on Sunday with a collection of bruises or cuts which were too trivial to heal, but left her looking like a punching bag.

Draco, who had become the castle's darling since his change in attitude, studied dueling with Dumbledore, who was far more gentle than either of Daphne's teachers, but also had developed a rather unique love of Astronomy.

Harry actually turned down the offers of the majority of his teachers, being the single student in the school who saw Dumbledore more than the rest of the students combined. Dumbledore was a visionary in the fields of Transfiguration and Alchemy - and though Harry had never truly wanted to learn how to duel, Dumbledore sensed that it would be useful to him in the long run and taught many lessons with a side focus in the art.

No, Harry and Neville learned to duel from Draco and Daphne. Harry was barely ever interested in the affair - he told the other three that he had an arsenal necessary to defend himself if necessary and the study of alchemy was conducive to defeating wizards twice his age, even without the element of surprise.

Despite his lack of interest in the process of dueling, it seemed as though none of his friends had any sort of ease in defeating him anyway. Harry kept telling him that there was a certain mindset they had to understand of those who were or wished to be alchemists. The conversion process of even air itself could be twisted and improvised to do extremely intuitive things that could win a duel before it started - their goal should have been to think of what Harry would do to combat certain strategies and respond accordingly.

Neville showed the most aptitude for this, choosing to dive into barrel rolls or knock his randomly conjured metal plating out of the way upon every slash of his wand. Harry couldn't do anything to drastic for fear of severely hurting them - and they weren't about to use the borderline dangerous curses that they could fling with impunity against their mentors.

Recently, Neville had taken to study sessions with various members of different houses - all of them their age. Unlike Draco (who cultivated a following of admirers rather than friends), Daphne (who was charming to everyone but rather aloof to those who weren't in her friend group already) and Harry (who unsettled most people with his brilliant stare and more brilliant mind), Neville was a natural leader of sorts. The boy had cultivated a following of people who were rather useful - even Harry admitted it.

Only Daphne joined him in these study sessions and Neville never let them forget that he enjoyed all nights of learning esoterica during the weekends in the common room with them far more than he enjoyed time with his newfound friends.

But Neville had all but dragged them along this time to one of his study sessions.

There were a ton of people there. Ron Weasley from Gryffindor, who looked guardedly at Harry and Draco, but developed a shade of pink in his cheeks when Daphne curtsied at him. Hermione Granger, the girl they had met on the train, who looked rather surprised at the comfort that 'Neville's Slytherin friends' seemed to exhibit with one another. Two more boys from Gryffindor - Finnegan and Thomas, who Harry didn't know the first names of.

There was a modest muggleborn boy from Hufflepuff that no one seemed to know very well, Terry Boot from Ravenclaw who Daphne waved to in the Great Hall once in a while, Padma Patil, who was spinning her wand in her left hand casually, and three more people that Harry really didn't remember the names of at all.

After bows and curtsies were given all around, as well as hasty introductions by Neville and warm smiles from Daphne, the room was sealed quickly. Neville had learned to summon a time-sensitive cone of silence rather than one that had to be held up with continuous effort.

"Okay, everyone, Potter, Greengrass, Malfoy, we're here to create our very first Mystic Codes."

The room broke into cheering and excitement.

"So as we all know-"

"No."

It was Harry who had spoken up. Harry was shaking his head, his expression in a frown.

Hermione looked as though the wind had been taken out of her sails. Daphne stared at Harry with a fair amount of curiosity, the rest of the students with resentment. Draco played with his wand and Neville shrugged with some sort of emotion that Harry thought might have been close to embarrassment.

"Why not?" Hermione asked. To their credit, the rest of the students allowed Hermione to speak for them rather than erupting in pandemonium.

Harry drew his wand. "Okay, take a look at this. This is every wizard's first mystic code and likely the only one that they will never create in their entire life, right?"

Hermione nodded at him, looking contemplative.

"Okay, so when we went to see Mr. Ollivander, he told us that certain wands were good at certain things, right?"

Everyone remembered the strange old man.

"When you create a mystic code, you're putting influence, you're putting your specific bent on the way you interact with magic. Ten points to whoever knows the Sweeting quote about intrinsicness."

Daphne waved her hand in the air with a positively campy smile on her face. "Ooh! Me, Harry!"

He wasn't as amused as she thought he would be. She put her hand down in a huff.

"The wizardfolk whom we call strong are those who find themselves intrinsically and inextricably tied to the performance of magecraft," she recited, sounding bored of his antics.

"So why does everyone say that Ollivander's Wands are the best? Because he wants to do something more than make a profit of ten or twelve galleons off the next poor fool who needs to perform magic. Professor Dumbledore said that there always has to be an exchange between the caster and magic itself every time a spell is performed. You have to make your intentions clear and you have to go through some sort of ritual to perform the simplest of spells - wave your hand, think in a certain way, wave a wand, whatever."

Hermione nodded, beginning to understand.

"So what do we know about Mystic Codes? We hear of the Broken Hand of Justice which belonged to Godelot Lestrange. About how he used it to shatter the rules of spellcasting due to his hatred of order. We hear of the First Blaze of Merlin, carried down the line to Dumbledore himself, which is used to burn 'existences' according to the books I've read."

It was clear that most of them had heard of neither of them, because only Draco seemed to be nodding along to this. Harry threw his hands in the air.

"Okay, anyway. The point is that you need to feel something really strongly about the way that you want magic to work with, for whatever reason, before you can change the way magic is cast. I think that the reason Ollivander can create a world renowned wand with a bit of wood and a dragon heartstring is because he feels some sort of obligation to open the eyes of a child to magic. So when you're creating a mystic code, it has to be something more than 'yeah, I want this to make magic easier for me'," Harry finished.

To his surprise, it was Daphne who interjected suddenly rather than Draco, who was probably one of the only people in the room with a chip on his shoulder large enough to write a Mystic Code. "Okay, this is all well and good. Professor Snape has a Mystic Code he calls _Darklight_. I mean, can you think of a more cliche name than that? He formed it in his fifth year."

"I dunno, Daphne. That sounds kind of cool to me," Neville said.

"Neville. Not helping," Daphne grumbled. "Okay, so it proves that he can make a Mystic Code and he made it at a young age. It doesn't have to be perfect. It doesn't have to work. Why can't we just try to make one. We don't have to aim to recreate the Left Hand of Justice or whatever. We just have to create something that we might not even be proud of enough to name. I for one want to know if I can create a permanent enchantment like a Mystic Code at this age. Snape is seriously smart, you know."

Harry gave up, deciding that trying to write a Mystic Code wasn't the dumbest thing in the world.


	17. The Start

Author's Note: This is your official welcome to the more cutthroat side of Fractal, where magic breaths and you breath softly as to attract not its attention.

Also, I apologize for the (lower) quality of the last chapter. It was not my best work. I was a little out of it.

**Kaleidoscope**

She decided that Beauxbatons would be boring if not for the three failed assassination attempts.

They hadn't been real assassination attempts, not in the risk-your-life-to-kill-the-target sense. They were assassins hired as an afterthought in the name of Lucius Malfoy for people who didn't really care for the man and only did so out of appearances.

Most of them engaged her in a rather half-hearted duel, then apparated away once Madame Maxime showed up to defend her student.

It was for this reason that Fleur Delacour was in her office.

"Fleur, you have to understand, I can't keep doing this."

Fleur nodded. "I'll be sure to kill them the next time it happens, then."

Maxime shook her head, looking uncharacteristically grim and a tad displeased by the casual way Fleur thought about the value of other lives. "That's not what I meant. In the interest of my other students' safety at this school, I cannot allow you to continue at Beauxbatons. We know between the two of us that your education is all but finished. There is not much I can teach you anymore that isn't too dangerous for you to-"

"Oh, I see," Fleur said, cutting her off. Maxime looked almost glad that the girl didn't let her continue rambling. "Well, what should I do, then?"

Maxime let out a deep breath. "I can allow you to graduate. Very soon, you will be outside of my ability to protect. When they begin to hire assassins who won't run from me, there will be collateral damage."

Fleur nodded. "I suppose that is a possible option."

"There are other alternatives. I can write you a recommendation and have it signed by Lady Greengrass to recommend you to the Clock Tower."

Fleur looked a little more ambivalent about this.

"Or I can send you to the protection of Albus Dumbledore."

Fleur shook her head. "I will not be going to Hogwarts Castle. Write me the recommendation, please. I would like to continue my studies in one way or another."

Maxime nodded heavily. "Be careful there. They are not schoolchildren and you will be in danger constantly simply for existing."

As Fleur stepped out of her office daintily, Maxime couldn't help but think that she had failed her best student in some way. Maxime began to pen an owl to Astrid Greengrass.

Fleur's face scrunched up into a mixture of various kinds of disgust and hopelessness until it became anticipation. She had palmed a pill hidden in her bag and had put it into her mouth. The strange flavor of cleaning fluid and violets had become almost comforting to her by this point. Maybe she'd skip her Potions class to go dancing or something.

**Unwell**

"Well, you can't say I didn't tell you. All of you."

There were three days before classes ended and everyone had progressed onto making their first Mystic Codes.

Harry grimaced. He wasn't making his own, but he was certainly interested in the process of creating them.

He had come fifteen minutes late.

Fifteen, so he could go to Madame Pomfrey's medical bay and take a large quantity of medicines she left out for the public. With a laundry bag full of burn salves, cut-closers, and all kinds of medicines and bandages, he had come back to utter chaos.

"First. I told everybody that nobody here is experienced enough to create a Mystic Code. Second, I told everybody to be careful when they started pumping magic into things."

Harry's voice rose just very slightly as he looked over the lines and lines of cuts all over Neville's hands and arms.

"And finally, I told everybody not to start without me today."

Draco moaned in pain, a patch of darkened skin on his right palm.

"You're going to have to go to the hospital wing for that one, mate," he said, shaking his head in Draco's direction. The boy moaned again and nodded, then dragged himself out of the room.

"Now, how about we shelve this project until next year, then?" Harry asked with false cheer as he began to uncap a jar of burn salve to deal with Ronald Weasley.

**Burning Bridges**

It happened really quickly.

Harry had asked for permission to gallivant around London during the holiday. The Hogwarts Express left at nine in the morning on the Sunday after all the classes had ended.

He and his three friends had shared a compartment in good cheer. Harry was, as usual, closed lipped about his ventures, but Daphne suspected his intention.

"Don't talk to strange men and definitely don't talk to scantily dressed women on street corners, Harry. Also, don't try to go into pubs. You're too young to drink your sorrows away," Daphne said, deadpan.

Harry had actually left his wand back at Hogwarts, believing that carrying it around for what he was doing would hinder his efforts. Besides, he could perform rudimentary alchemy and whatever magic that he had done in his first duel with Draco without it. Wouldn't it be surprising for whatever trouble following him to run into a brick wall quite literally?

"Don't break the Statute of Secrecy. You'll get in trouble even if you're defending yourself. And they'll ask the Headmaster stupid questions. We all know you can take care of yourself," Neville volunteered.

"Have fun, Potter," Draco said.

Daphne's mother was in the station to pick her up.

"Hello, Mrs. Greengrass!" Neville greeted.

Daphne's eyes widened and she stiffened suddenly as the woman who was probably not her mother drew her wand and, to the eyes of the other parents, had uttered a curse at her own daughter.

Harry pushed her out of the way and drew a pair of circles with his open palms in the air, immediately conjuring a thin sheet of metal.

The vibrant orange curse bounced off the reflective metal, hit a pillar and exploded.

"Down!" Draco shouted, seeing his own mother in the crowd, who was running towards him, but the station was beyond the point of sanity already.

Harry dragged the shocked Daphne to the ground, following Draco's diving lead and the three of them all rolled to a stop with their heads safely under a stone bench.

Neville decided that this was remarkably good thinking and cast a shield charm to block the flying rubble as he crawled to a stop near them.

"Avada Kedavra!" a voice shouted in the crowd, aiming straight at them. A jet of green light flew towards them, but went wide and hit the same pillar that the exploding curse had taken a huge chunk off of.

Harry's eyes had activated quite suddenly after hearing these words and he watched in slow motion as a huge block of stone came down onto the bench and smashed itself to bits.

"Well, I'm glad these damn seats held," Neville said. "Told you dueling would be useful training, Harry," he said. "We have to get out of here before the ceiling collapses," he hissed urgently.

"But my mother-" Draco complained.

"Yeah, and my grandmother. I'm sure Daphne's mother is actually just running late because no one can impersonate her with her around." Neville didn't even want to contemplate the type of enemy who could actually dispatch Daphne's mother. At any rate, they probably wouldn't be flinging spells into a crowd.

They ducked some more falling rubble and a bunch of people on the ground whom had been hit by the quickly collapsing ceiling.

"Run for the other end of the tracks," Harry said, pulling them in the right direction. "We don't know what that could have done to King's Cross, but we can definitely find a way out into London."

The exit, where the train had come from, was lit in the afternoon glow. It was a bit difficult to see what was outside, due to it being much brighter outside.

They made a mad dash towards the exit when a huge gong was heard throughout the station.

After a responding flash of light, the vast majority of parents and students had fallen to the floor, most of them unconscious from the strength of the magic. A huge bubble flared from a source in the crowd, keeping the station from collapse.

"Damn it!" Daphne shouted as her vision swam and she pitched forward. Neville caught her, a single trickle of blood flowing out of his left nostril from his resistance to the wave of pressure. Harry and Draco had grabbed one another by the arm and combined their magic into a sort of rudimentary shield - Harry was feeding the other boy magic, Draco was releasing it and Harry was shaping it with his fingers. He was kneading the magic like dough, sending out responsive bursts to shield the four of them from the relentless pulses of power.

There were five people arrayed around the station - still standing and with their wands and various Mystic Codes pointed at them.

"Surrender if you want to live," one of them called over.

Harry shouted back. "Not a chance. If you wanted to let any of us live, you wouldn't have started with an Exploding Hex."

"And who are you, boy?" the same voice shouted back.

"He's Harry fucking Potter!" Neville shouted, whipping his wand back and forth to generate some sort of ball of lightning which loosed a thunderbolt at the man who was speaking to them.

"Protego!" the man shouted, completely misunderstanding the natural of lightning. The shield charm diluted the sheer strength of the spell, but a thin lance speared the man through the stomach and he screamed and fell to the ground, twitching.

Even as Neville fell to the ground from exhaustion and the other people raised their wands to fire on them, Daphne wondered why Neville didn't shoot it at the man maintaining the magical pulses.

Then it hit her, as she parried a bolt of reddish brown light with her wand and Harry smoothly ducked another. Neville was a better person than she - if he had hit the man, the blue light holding up the station would have shattered and the station would have killed every man, woman and child groaning or passed out on the ground.

Harry and Draco were still holding up their improvised shield - which was still somehow effective and neither of them showed signs of tiring.

Daphne felt like cursing. While she and Draco were quite better at Harry and Neville at traditional dueling, there was nothing like an alchemist when it came to unwelcome surprises for an enemy.

"Who are you with?" Daphne shouted, desperate to bring the fighting to a halt somehow. They were just first year students, no matter how gifted with their wands or how much they practiced. There were only so many ways that Harry and Draco could dodge incoming charms without dropping the shield and leaving the four of them quickly incapacitated.

Worse yet, Neville had not stopped bleeding - Daphne knew instinctively that it was a brain injury of some sort.

Without warning, a blur of color surged out of the crowd and impaled one of their assailants through the chest with a fuzzy pink umbrella.

"That's my grandmother," Neville said, looking relieved and horrified in equal measures.

Augusta Longbottom, the matriarch of the Longbottom family, was dressed in very traditional robes and held a wand in one hand. She had a strange hat with a stuffed vulture on it, but it clearly wasn't for show, as the vulture jumped off her hat and into the path of a spell that was slated to sever her neck from behind.

If anything, losing her stuffed vulture only made the woman more fierce, as she lifted the rubble with one smooth wave of her wand and banished nearly a metric ton of fallen rocks at chest level.

"Run and bring them home, Neville!" the old woman squeaked, as the rubble proved impossible to dodge for the man maintaining the stasis spell holding the station together and sending out those pulses of magic. As blood poured from the holes which the rubble had pushed through his body, most of the adults in the station came to rather violently, instantly jumping to their feet in a surge of adrenaline.

Harry and Draco dropped their spell even as the station gave a very ominous rumble.

Dame Longbottom continued to duel, shouting for anyone with a wand to levitate the station itself, as what could only be assassins continued to duck and weave around her spells. It was clear that she was quickly tiring, but she pressed on admirably.

Harry and his friends quickly vacated the station, turning back to glance at the hundreds of adults who had raised their wands skyward to protect their families.

**Aftermath**

The trek to the Leaky Cauldron did not prove difficult for Harry, who carried a small sum of muggle currency and could navigate the tube system. Draco and Neville looked distinctly uncomfortable to be wearing robes, while Daphne had never been so glad to have changed into a pastel green dress and a jacket.

In a show of solidarity, they chose to sit between the two robed boys and talk softly to them. Draco wouldn't stop shaking - possibly a side effect of being Harry's magic conductor and his hair was frizzled. Neville had wiped the bloodstain off of his upper lip, but he looked distinctly unwell. Daphne was breathing heavily from overexertion in casting the shield charms that she was suddenly glad she learned.

Harry seemed to be fine, but it appeared as though his paranoia was bordering on mania at the moment. His hands, in his pockets, were twitching as though he was still molding huge amounts of magic.

They managed to floo through the fireplace of the Leaky Cauldron to Neville's manor without much trouble at all - the bartender there had actually given them cold butterbeers after seeing the state they were in, on the house.

As Harry tumbled out of the fireplace unceremoniously, managing to spill only a small amount of butterbeer, and crashed into all three of them, he muttered unintelligibly to himself.

"My eyes are itching," he said quietly.

All of them took a drink, almost at once.

"Activate them," Draco said. "I thought I saw something weird hap-"

"There's two. Two stains or commas, in your right eye. The left one's the same," Neville remarked, being the closest person to Harry.

Harry shuddered. "I don't like it. I really don't like it. It feels weird, like I'm swimming through something when I'm walking, it's too clear-" his words came out in a jumble.

There was clearly something else and Daphne was going to drag it out of him if she had to. "That's not it, Harry, is it? It's emotion based, there must be-"

Harry looked positively haunted and Daphne regretted pushing immediately for her vain interest. As if it couldn't have gotten any creepier, Harry had begun to cry out of his right eye and his right eye only.

"Everything's a different shade. More red. More black," he said. "But the problems are more clear too. The problems," he paused, thinking of a way to explain. "The problems are these little flashes of stuff that's happened. When I see Draco, sometimes I could… see his reaction to the news about his father. It's a lot more clear now."

He had taken a risk. This was something he had never wanted to reveal to anyone but Dumbledore.

Daphne and Neville looked stricken, Draco surprised and saddened.

Harry deactivated them. "I don't need your pity," he almost shouted. The words had come out in a hiss.

Instantly, Daphne's face harshened. "And you'll get none of it. I don't pity you, Harry. You're my friend."

"A very wise statement for someone so young," came a voice from behind an opening door.

"Grandmother!" Neville shouted, running over to hug her.

"I brought Lady Malfoy along with me," Augusta said. Draco's mother was behind her.

"And-" Daphne started.

Augusta untangled herself from Neville and looked rather grave. "I've contacted Albus, through some older routes." She threw a sideways glance at Lady Malfoy which the other woman missed.

"She's missing, presumed dead," Daphne said, mechanically.

Augusta shook her head, looking bemused. "You are far too pessimistic, child. Astrid is a formidable woman, Dumbledore's most powerful living student. I am sure some things would have been triggered had she…" she trailed off, realizing suddenly that she was in the company of minors who had not seen war.

"Forgive me for my lack of tact in this matter," she said, mostly to Daphne. "All of you have performed admirably. What exactly was admirably performed is, I am afraid, quite beyond me. I have not seen battle magic of that sort since the Darkness in the seventies."

Harry shook his head, recovered from his earlier stint. "It wasn't battle magic. It was alchemy."

Lady Malfoy looked at him sharply, reevaluating the boy.

"Alchemy?" Augusta asked, several shades more alarmed than she was earlier.

"Mhm," Harry grunted affirmatively, trying to place himself somewhere more easy to understand and somewhere more polite simultaneous and failing miserably. "I've been learning under the Headmaster for some time now. He told me stories about Conduit Theory being used to ward things and I thought I'd be good enough to do it."

It was clear that Conduit Theory went over everyone's head, but he was sure they had some guesses, especially considering his need of Draco in his spellcasting.

"Is he hurt, Mr. Potter?" Narcissa asked, desperately hoping her son was not.

"I don't think so. In theory he shouldn't have even felt the magic, but some of it probably bled over his control. It's really amazing he managed it so easily." Harry had, after all, given the extremely vague command of 'take my magic with your left hand and push it out your right'.

Luckily, Draco had clearly been doing reading on how to manipulate magic within his own body. The fact that he wasn't looking slightly more crispy was a testament to the case.

"They aren't playing around anymore. Those weren't just wizards, Ms. Greengrass," Augusta spoke, after a lull in the conversation.

In that moment, none of the children looked ready to grow up, but it seemed as though that was their fate.


	18. Reprieve

**Kaleidoscope**

Astrid knew they were after Daphne the moment the wards closed around them and they were dragged into a strange bounded field.

She knew that it wasn't just a bunch of wards because bounded fields had a slightly different flavor to them. While wards were nonspecific and dangerous because of their lack of specificity - choosing to do mundane things like keeping Muggles away from Hogwarts or to bounce out people with strange intent, a Bounded Field was more of a revision of space.

This one was pretty damn good. Any mage worth their salt could set up a bounded field which was difficult to notice, but it usually took a goodly amount of time. Astrid didn't work with them herself, but she did know a ton about the deconstruction of them.

This one was quick and strong and layered against the more familiar ward presences.

There was something which would keep her from Apparating, something that rendered her three Portkeys entirely useless and even a strange layer of mist that made it hard to feel for her mentor's Phoenix.

That last one was something she was familiar with - it was a ward powered by sacrifice. Human sacrifice. Someone had taken a ritual knife to a virgin girl between the age of thirteen and fifteen in order to trap her.

But Blue was faring much worse. There were strange red lines which had shackled her, from each corner of their cubic room.

That was a mistake. Rounded rooms were far easier to trap. Things like corners or straight lines had some sort of power to them which could be twisted or used.

Astrid was a consummate professional in this regard. Albus Dumbledore had this habit of trapping his older students in his office, sealing their magic and telling them that a certain number of objects in the room would guarantee their escape. Lily, of course, had been far better at that - capable of seeing magic even if her vaunted eyes were forcibly deactivated.

But she was no slouch.

"Calm down, Blue. We're going to sing a little song."

Blue looked at her like she was insane. "A song? You're thinking of-"

Astrid shot her an extremely rare glare. "I have reason to believe my daughter is in grave danger. You will help me."

"Twinkle, twinkle, little star, how I wonder what you are."

Halfway through, Astrid harmonized with her.

"Up above the world so high, like a diamond in the sky."

The door, which had been held shut by some sort of blockade, crystallized into some hybrid of metal and glass and then shattered.

Blue never ceased to be amazed by her abilities, but the satisfaction was rather cold this time. Astrid had a daughter to rescue.

"Are you healed, Ms. Green?" Blue asked, fiddling with the strange red strands.

Astrid was more worried about her partner. The lines had wound themselves around Blue's neck in a sort of noose.

"Pull your magic back. Don't push against the Field," Astrid warned.

Blue complied. The lines dulled to pink, but did not disappear.

Astrid nodded. "There's something about your magic which it's targeting. I can't say what it is, but I think we'll find out. I think it would be better if you didn't utilize the Fifth. Stick to your incantations."

Blue looked a little scared and a little mutinous, but Astrid knew the girl knew better. No, she didn't know, but she certainly hoped.

Astrid walked out the door into a dimly lit hallway.

_Was this some sort of bad horror movie imitation_?

Whatever it was, Blue seemed quite scared.

The lights flickered.

"Keep your emotions in check. I have reason to believe that they're powering the wards." The Headmaster had loved those - particularly wards powered by the frustration of the people within. That was one of the few ways he was capable of trapping Lily, who preferred to be frantic rather than calm and impulsive as anyone she had known.

There was a loud bang and Astrid slumped backwards onto the floor. Blue screamed.

Astrid stood up, chanting something, and a shard of metal came out of her chest and the flesh knit itself.

She held it up to the light. "Did someone just shoot me with a gun?" she asked outloud, sounding incredulous. Suddenly, she moved in front of Blue.

There was a roar of gunfire, again, filling her body with copper and lead, but it was clear that the approach was extremely ineffective.

With a wave of her hand, the bullets were returned to their sender and suddenly, the hallway was full of blood sprayed onto the walls and leaking onto the ground.

"That's a form of invisibility I haven't seen in a while," Astrid commented quietly, her face a little pale. She seemed ready to lose her lunch. "Say, Blue, I think the last roast beef sandwich I had was poisoned."

Blue shrugged. "I watched them make it."

Astrid stared at her, barely believing the girl's naivety. "If you're seriously trying to poison someone, you'd do it on the farm, then send it off."

Blue blinked. "Wouldn't it suck if it was shipped to other patients or something?"

Astrid gave a grim chuckle. "Don't you smell the death? Everyone but our aggressors - and us - is dead. Everyone. I think if we were to open any door in the hospital, we would find a strange growth in their eyes of each patient and a swollen tongue, as well as kidney failure."

Blue looked distinctly uncomfortable. "They killed everyone in this hospital just to get us?"

Astrid's laughter sounded worse this time. "Of course not. They aren't trying to do anything but delay us a little. They'll need quite a bit more firepower than this. They killed everyone in this hospital in order to kill my daughter and send me a message."

Astrid tapped at the pink line around Blue's neck, which looked more like a light than actual magical signaling by this point, and scoffed.

"Despite the ingenuity, this is quite weak. It is my belief that they have more than one magus capable of this and they are currently experimenting to figure out how long this will hold you. If you ever feel this Field again, you should probably cut off your magic immediately. You've fed it for several minutes longer than you should have, especially by struggling."

As though the Universe itself beat along to a rhythm created by Astrid's words, the pink line slowly faded to nothing and Blue felt the constrictions fall away.

She aimed at a wall with several windows and fired.

**Answers**

Astrid knocked gently and the door to Longbottom Manor swung open.

It was two in the morning, but Augusta was still awake, staring into a dying fire.

Daphne, Neville and a boy she recognized as Harry Potter were all dozing on various pieces of furniture in various states of comfort.

"Trouble at work?" Augusta asked suddenly, but gently.

Augusta had always liked her, even after that disastrous two year long relationship with her son Frank.

Frank was, of course, doing important auror things at this hour, or maybe sleeping uncomfortably in his bed, alone. Astrid quashed the little voice in her that whispered _serves him right_.

Harry Potter had woken suddenly, his head whipping back and forth.

"Daphne, your mum's here. I think that's your mum, at least," Harry said, just loud enough to wake her daughter, who was a light sleeper.

Daphne was up immediately and in her arms the next moment.

"Did any of you get hurt?"

"There was this spell, mum. First they threw a hex but then it hit a pillar and the station nearly came down and they were throwing killing curses, but Harry used alchemy to reverse the-"

"Slow down, dear," Astrid said, her mind painting a horrifically violent picture of what happened.

She looked over at Harry, who was a tad too jumpy to not be traumatized in some way.

"Are you the Headmaster's newest student?" Astrid asked him, as Daphne tried to compose herself.

Augusta had conjured glasses of water for everyone, bless her.

Harry nodded. "We're working on Alchemy."

Astrid paused and looked at him, really looked at him. This was Lily's son, after all. She wondered privately if he suffered from the same genius, the same madness, the same manias and cruelties and loves and-

But she took measured steps away from memory lane so she didn't unnerve the child.

"Augusta, may I have a moment of privacy with Harry and Daphne?"

The older woman nodded and left the room.

"Have you manifested the Eyes?" she asked, as soon as the door closed behind Augusta.

Harry started, then looked at Daphne.

"I knew your mother very well when we were younger, and learning under Professor Dumbledore," she explained.

Daphne had decided to hold onto her story in interest of knowing more.

"May I see them?"

Harry nodded carefully.

Astrid observed them for several moments, then frowned. "Have you begun to perceive intention?"

Harry nodded.

"Precognition? As though you _knew_ something was going to happen."

Harry shrugged.

"Deja vu? As though you could swear something's already happened before when it's completely impossible?"

Harry's face looked conflicted, then he nodded.

"It's happening now, isn't it?" Astrid asked him. "You think you've had this conversation with me before. In fact, you're so very sure you've had this conversation before-"

"And it's honestly not the best feeling in the world," they finished at the same time.

Daphne gasped.

"Turning them off might bring you a little comfort," she said and Harry complied immediately. "They used to call that many things, but the Eye of the Prophetic Printer was probably Lily's favorite. Your sense of precognition is possibly as strong as hers, even though her eyes were much further along."

Harry frowned in turn. "A man named Remus Lupin said the same."

Astrid nodded. "Yes, Remus would certainly know. Every Eye is different, even between your right and your left. Your mother had a fantastic ability to deconstruct anything she saw. She was very good at winning friends and influencing people, though sometimes I wonder if it were truly just charisma."

"What does it mean though, further along?"

Astrid weighed him with her eyes. Dumbledore hadn't seen fit to tell the boy, apparently. "Well, there are several stages to your Eye. The end stage is three _tomoe_ or stains in both eyes. By that point, Lily was capable of finishing spells alongside her opponent as they were cast and taking that knowledge for herself."

There was the faintest hint of bitterness in Astrid's tone which only Daphne caught.

"Harry, tell me, do you consider Daphne to be a good friend of yours?"

Harry nodded, fine with the change in topic. "She and Neville are my best friends," he declared, sounding completely convinced of it.

Astrid's smile slipped just a little.

**All I've Done**

Fleur packed her side of the room with a wave of her wand. Nearly a hundred different items of clothing crammed themselves into a tiny little purse, then sorted themselves up. She handpicked several different cosmetic items and threw them into the purse with her clothing, then changed out of her Beauxbatons uniform into something a little warmer and a lot more eye-catching.

She let her grace go to waste, with a hint of stumble in her step and an almost-placid smile in her eyes, though her dilated pupils shown with excitement.

She was about to do something new! Be somewhere important! Research magic, get her degree, make something with her life!

But she knew that she didn't really feel that way. It was just the little pieces of good emotion she had ingested.

There was a knock on the door.

"Come in," she said softly.

The door opened.

It was Stefan, the lackluster boy who had seen her kill Malfoy on stage. She gave him credit for not telling anyone.

"You don't have to go, Fleur," he started, immediately. "You can stay, here in Beauxbatons. Who's trying to get you to leave? If you're going because of this misguided sense of loyalty you undoubtedly have-"

Fleur put a finger to his lips, smiling slightly. His rant was cut short.

"Stefan," she said gently.

His eyes looked similar to all those boys in those nightclubs and raves, with a singular difference. She saw more than just that one driving primal emotion in there.

"Oh, Stefan," she said, even more gently, holding his heart of glass.

She walked past him, and the boy collapsed onto her chair as though his strings had been cut away.

"If you could have stayed," he cried out desperately after her, tears forming at the corners of his eyes.

Fleur turned around and smiled, then lied through her teeth, her face in an otherworldly mimicry of someone who did truly love. "Maybe, maybe if I could have," she promised.

She walked back through the door and bent down to kiss him gently on the cheek, turned around and never looked back. She doubted she'd recognize him if she ever saw him again.


	19. The Ritual

Author's Note: Hey guys. This isn't beta'd. Sorry.

**Kaleidoscope**

The Dumbledore family had always had a little bit of a problem with the drink. Once upon a time, Albus had made the pledge to never have a drop, to break the endless cycle of pain and suffering brought along by an innocent glass of firewhiskey.

He was not successful. Though he certainly wasn't his brother Aberforth, who drank himself stupid every night after closing that little bar in Hogsmeade, Albus drank once in a while - on very specific days.

He drank on the thirteenth of February, to commemorate the night he cast his empathy to the dirt and fired everything he had on his old friend Gellert. He drank on the first of June, the night that Tom had declared himself as Lord Voldemort in a running battle through Diagon Alley that left three thousand dead and a hundred houses burning. He drank on the Hallowed Night, to remind himself of the wand he held and to remind himself that he failed Lily.

Albus wanted to drink on all the days in which he had been forced to kill the myriad of students who had failed not him, but the world. For every three children he had imparted the higher magics to, he lost one.

And it was always generational. He didn't quite understand what type of luck he had to have to deserve _this_.

These seven years, he would give his wisdom to Harry Potter and Draco Malfoy, both of them with depths of talents that he had only seen once in a while. There would be one more, chosen from the student body whenever he or she approached him. Perhaps it would be Astrid's daughter, or little Luna Lovegood who would enter Hogwarts next year.

But he knew with a heavy heart that one of them would die by the end of his wand - or he would die by the end of theirs.

Albus Dumbledore didn't worry much about Draco Malfoy's ability to kill him, but he knew Harry Potter had the potential.

He was optimistic though, because if he wasn't, nothing at all would be worth it.

It was Solstice Night.

He quashed the urge to drown his sorrows away and decided to fire-call Aberforth.

**The Line She Walked**

Daphne and Neville had a quiet fight in an empty drawing room about who had the right to have Harry over after Solstice at the Bones'.

While Midsummer's Night was celebrated with the family in a glade, hopefully with a fairy ring, Solstice was a huge gathering of magical families in order to preserve their strength on the longest night of the year.

People were encouraged to invite anybody worth anything to the ancestral manor of the Bones', since it was relatively neutral ground following the end of Lord Voldemort and it boasted a huge Summoning Circle on its grounds.

Of course, barely anything was ever summoned - the last time that an entity had appeared within the circle was when Albus Dumbledore had last participated thirty years ago.

Everyone was abuzz at the moment, since the Longbottom scion and the Greengrass scion would join the circle for the first time.

And they had brought along Harry Potter with them.

Currently, Astrid was warning Harry against participating in an abandoned hallway.

Harry didn't quite understand. "It'll make me more powerful, and make everyone better at magic, right?" he asked. "And there are no real drawbacks, right?"

Astrid shook her head, trying not to vocalize exactly what she thought would happen if Harry participated.

"There are… many entities in the world who could be drawn into the Summoning Circle. And many entities beyond the world. I myself do not participate."

Harry stared at her, looking vaguely confused.

"The Old Mages used to have a little mantra 'it's in the blood, it's in the blood', not because it was better to be a pureblood or that it would make you more powerful. It was because this forced them to remember the sacrifices that their families had made."

Harry was bewildered, though he was slowly piecing the puzzle together. "So you think that if I joined the circle, my blood would draw a demon or something?"

Astrid shook her head. "Not something quite as simple as a demon, Harry. There are reasons for me to believe that you have a smidgen of things a tad more powerful in you than just a few drops of demon blood. There are things in this universe which human beings should not, as young Neville would say so crudely, fuck with."

Astrid's double entendre had been intentional based on her knowledge of the older magics, but as she expected, the more lewd usage flew over Harry's head.

"So what happens if I summon something into the circle? And who's to say that Daphne and Neville won't do the same? They're quite advanced too, right?"

She let out a heavy sigh. "It's not that I'm afraid of what you might summon into that circle. I do kill Eldritch abominations for a living, Harry. In fact, my partner in crime - or law enforcement perhaps, is out here, enjoying herself. It's that I'm afraid that whatever you might accidentally see in that circle would give you purpose. And purpose, of course, is the most terrible thing to have."

"You're all the same," Harry complained, with a hint of humor. "You, and Headmaster Dumbledore. You're so wise."

"But unlike Albus, you can't butter me up, young man," Astrid scolded. "The Headmaster might cave to pleas and to the pursuit of knowledge, though despite his great accomplishments, his greatest power and his greatest failing remains the fact that he can see the good in everyone."

Harry decided it would be a good time to change the topic now. "He taught you too, right? Did he teach you alchemy?"

Astrid smiled at him in a complex way that he didn't quite understand. "I never asked Professor Dumbledore to teach me the Patterns, no."

Harry thought it was interesting that the woman referred to alchemy like the oft-quoted Perenelle Flamel did in the copy of _Translitera_ which Dumbledore had copied. He would have asked her about it if Astrid hadn't seemed to have lost herself in the telling of her story.

"When I was a young girl, I had something to prove. Me and your mother both, and a boy named Regulus. Regulus had the simplest dream - to prove that he was the most talented boy to every come out of his family. Considering his lineage, he would have had quite a difficult time. Lily wanted to prove that being from a pureblood family wasn't everything. I brought her to one of these gatherings when we were in our third year and she consciously refused to join the circle."

"And you?"

Astrid's eyebrows did a little jump, almost sardonically. "I wanted to kill a man."

The story had begun to sound horrifically familiar.

"Who was he?"

Astrid's face had taken on yet another expression he had never seen before and the sheer ways the lines on her face moved forced a primal sort of fear out of him, the misery of needing wanting to kill and oh it was all too much and the world was fading into a clear sharp red black misery read all intentions emotions SURVIVE SURVIVE KILL the dissonant chords striking a meter heard only to one universe one curator a woman named astrid astrid with a soul as pure as a clear green blade of grass a blade that cut the grass salazar the sage cutting away the grass to trim it so neat for the world SURVIVE SURVIVE live to KILL another day SURVIVE SURVIVE One two three four a kick drum to every quarter note twice the speed of your heart One two Three four presto agitato this is the sound of girl dancing with a handsome stranger or dancing to the tune of that bastard ludwig van beethoven going blind KILL he was a bad man he was a dead man and she would SURVIVE SURVIVE and KILL him-

"I didn't quite care who he was." Harry's eyes had receded back into that green that Daphne called prettier than her own and Astrid's face had rearranged itself into an expression of quiet comfort with the world.

But in a single instance, he had known what Draco Malfoy could become. He could understand why this woman before him was one of the predators, even if she wore the face of an attractive blonde trophy wife.

Everything in Harry screamed for him to take a step back, but he didn't.

"I wasn't interested in the Patterns because I didn't think that they could help me fight. Patently wrong, but I don't think I had the detachment necessary to even come close to seeing one of the Fractals, after all-"

Harry frowned, but it was a thoughtful one, "Dumbledore's book keeps saying that. Fractal this, Fractal that. What does it mean? He says that they're-"

"Your desperation is showing, dear," Astrid admonished. "The Headmaster will tell you what they are when the knowledge is necessary to your studies."

A tinge of embarrassment colored his cheeks. "Sorry," he muttered.

"You're only sorry you've been caught. But that in itself is a good way to live," Astrid said, fully in her original persona once more - all secret little smiles that made you and you alone feel special. "Now, let's rejoin the party. We have two hours yet until midnight."

"I'll take your advice, Mrs. Greengrass," Harry promised. And he would, too. There was something about the woman showing him her true face that made her advice seem sacred to him.

**Calling**

When Harry got back to Daphne and Neville, Draco had already joined them. Neville looked sour about something and Daphne triumphant.

"Did you two work out where I would go after this," Harry said loudly enough to grab their attention from several steps away.

Daphne nodded and pointed at herself.

"What did you trade him?" Harry knew there was no way there wasn't some sort of exchange.

Daphne counted off her fingers. "A small plant, species _Mimbulus Mimbletonia_, which releases stinksap when prodded - a harmless prank item until you realize that a huge part of modern warding is based off of it… and my annotated copy of Elijah's _The Element_."

"You were going to give those to him anyway," Harry accused. "For Christmas."

"But he gets them three days early."

Harry looked at Neville, feigning a look of betrayal. "My presence is worth as much as an early Christmas present?"

"It's not like we won't see each other every day of break. Unless you still want to wander into London," Neville said, his voice dropping to just over a whisper.

Harry thought it over. He wasn't quite sure if he still wanted to do that. Neville seemed to sense this, so he kept quiet his more immature side which wanted Harry to go on an adventure.

"Ritual's starting," Daphne said, interrupting Harry's contemplation. "Out to the back we go."

Harry shook his head. "I don't think I'll actually appreciate this time. I get the sense that once you do it, there's no real going back."

"That's what my mother says."

The three of them slowly followed the crowd of moving people out into the grounds.

Mostly everyone was standing around a large field of wheat. No one was leading them, but everyone was so used to the procedure that they were appropriately joining hands with the people they trusted already.

Astrid was standing on a nearby hillside, watching them. Harry broke off from Daphne and Neville to stand with her.

The chanting started slowly - a strange man wearing a weird symbol on his cloak and his younger daughter, who were holding hands with a potbellied man Harry recognized as the owner of some Firewhisky company and Fred Weasley respectively, began to sing in a clear Welsh.

"That's Xeno Lovegood," Astrid muttered. "He has a certain amount of courage. Very few people would dare to start the ritual, especially with that sort of opening."

"What's he saying?" Harry asked. He didn't understand Welsh.

"Watch with your eyes," Astrid said.

Harry activated his eyes and watched the strands of magic around the man slowly change from red and black to blue and gold.

"Oh-" he said, surprised.

"Ever since the scion of Myrrdin Emyrs died, few people have dared to sing the Song of Promised Victory, especially not while wearing Fate/Materials on their cloak. It's almost as if he wanted to be cursed with an interesting life."

That was the last curse Barnabas Deverill had uttered - a promise to Loxias Black that the man would have an interesting life.

"I've never seen anything like it before," Harry finally said.

Astrid made a noise of affirmation. "I would have been highly surprised if you have. There are many things which govern the fabric of this world, and this is, you could possibly say, the view of a certain structure of governance through the lens of a kaleidoscope or maybe the negative image burned into the film of a camera."

"Not even alchemy looks this different to my Eyes."

"How different?"

"Well, it's colors I've never seen before."

"Colors?" Astrid prodded sharply.

"Yeah," Harry said. "Blue and gold, rather than red and black."

"Oh that poor fool. He was successful. That poor, poor fool." Astrid grimaced.

"What's wrong?" Harry asked, perplexed.

"I'll explain later. I'm very glad you told me. There is a certain… way that the piece of magic he's weaving can react with Daphne. Or you, possibly more strongly with you. I'm glad you'd chosen to observe with me. I need to make preparations," Astrid said.

She sat on the ground and began to chant, herself. Harry watched a surge of energy, almost as great as the sum total of the magic produced by the ritual itself, coalesce under their feet. It too, was not red and black, but green. Green as fresh grass.

"What are you doing, Mrs. Green-"

The magic boiled. "Please don't interrupt me, Harry. This is delicate."

Harry nodded and the magic settled.

Around Astrid, a singular flower rose out of the ground, a lily of the valley. It bloomed. Harry drew in his breath sharply.

The magic which Astrid seemed to have grown from the earth itself condensed into strange and smaller shapes. Harry didn't truly dare watch Astrid too closely - he was sure whatever the woman was doing would be imprinted upon his mind rather violently, so he went back to watching the ritual.

Astrid began to speak. "In the war-torn pastures of the world, I pushed aside small bushes and shrubbery in search of fresh grass."

Harry realized that the woman was absorbing this huge, huge well of power she had either grown or summoned.

"I met a blade of grass that told me about its predicament, that no one would realize it was green."

The lily of the valley wilted, just a bit.

"I laughed at it. It was yellowed, decayed and molding. It looked to be barely alive."

The lily danced in the wind.

"It told me that when I found the green pastures in my soul, I would know where the green pastures in the world were."

The energy was nearly gone now, the lily nearly dead.

"And one morning, I caught a glimpse from beyond the Veil of Maya, the illusion that we are all caught in and I saw the Root of the World for an eternity in the infinitely small fraction of another Fractal… Pastures so green, so unforgiving…"

The energy was gone, all of it within Astrid.

"Now we wait, Harry."

"What did you do?" Harry asked, entranced and a little afraid.

Astrid giggled, sounding years and years younger than she was - almost like Daphne. "I'd tell you, but they you'd have to marry my daughter."

Harry sputtered. "Uh, I-"

"Relax, Harry. I'm only joking. The first part of that was a chant passed down through the lines of my house. I have no doubt that Daphne is working up to saying it, down there," she said, pointing at the ritual circle. "The last bit is my personal revelation. I believe that something that none of us will like very much will appear in that circle."

"A demon?" Harry queried.

"Much, much worse," Astrid said, a strange gleam in her eyes. "Faerie folk. Summer fae, in fact. It will want Daphne. It will certainly want young Draco, there's enough anger in his soul. And despite the fact that you had no part in summoning it, it will want you."

"Why us?"

"There are some things in the world that perceive potential like nothing else - not only the possibilities of certain people, but the possibilities of the way that the world will move."

Harry didn't understand.

"Now is not the time. Observe the circle."

And Harry was well and truly afraid.

No one but Astrid and himself had noticed it, because Harry doubted that the little twisting symbol which he couldn't quite seem to nail down as one specific shape - it was moving too quickly - could be seen by anyone else.

He stared at it intently, trying to analyze it as it shifted and turned and changed. He felt his vision burn it into his mind and-

"Don't look too closely, turn your eyes off." Astrid was suddenly standing in front of him, wiping the twin trails of tears that were leaking out of his eyes.

Harry let his vision recede, for just a moment feeling a sort of resistance he had never felt before, but he broke through.

"If you push too hard, you'll evolve your eyes prematurely and damage your magic irreparably," Astrid said. There was the ominous note of experience in her tone.

She showed her fingers to Harry. They were covered in blood. His blood.

Harry stared at them, touching his own fingers to the trails on his cheek. Dark, thick, rich and red. He held back a scream.

"Blue," Astrid whispered, her voice laced with something that Harry was sure he would have been capable of seeing with his eyes.

A little rift in the air appeared next to her and fairly drunk girl several years older than himself stepped out of it. She had bright red hair, oriental features, and was dressed in a robe which had been cut off near the waist, as well as a pair of muggle jeans and fingerless gloves which extended to her elbows.

"Is that your partner?" Harry asked.

"Who the hell are you?" the girl asked. At first, Harry thought she was referring to him, but she was staring directly at Astrid, her hands assuming a strange clasp that began to glow.

"You're drunk, Blue."

"Green?" she wondered. "You look like Green. But your magic's nothing like Green's. Impostor?" she wondered aloud.

"No, I've imbibed a little bit of necessary strength. Make yourself not drunk, now."

"But it's fun! You definitely are Green, you party pooper," she complained.

"Look at that," Astrid said, exasperated. She pointed at place where Harry didn't dare to cast his eyes at.

"What? There's nothing th- Oh, oh no. Oh this is bad. That's a huge summoning circle. What are they summoning? Should we be killing them?"

"No," Astrid hissed. "They don't know they're summoning anything. It's actually a side effect of a long running tradition in my community. Something has latched onto their energy exchange and is going to appear there soon. I need you to go get Nicholas."

"The philosopher?" Blue asked, half-slurring.

Astrid sighed. "Yes. You have two assignments right now. You need to find the Lord Philosopher and you need to be sober, now. Eat a purging pill."

Blue sighed and fished out a little purple-

"No! That's not a purging pill. The purging pills are the blue ones."

"Oh…" Blue trailed off and fished around in her pockets a bit more, found a blue pill and downed it in a gulp.

Instantly, there was a flare of magic and Blue heaved, vomiting.

"It removes common toxins from your body rather easily," Astrid explained to Harry. "They're rather useful for a variety of purposes."

"Water," Blue croaked, stumbling.

"It also dehydrates you significantly," Astrid continued, conjuring a glass with her wand and filling it with water.

Blue gulped it down and disappeared into the air once more.

Astrid removed a bright red feather from a chain around her neck, set it on the ground and pointed her wand at it. A little stream of yellow fire lit up the feather and a single spark burst into the air as the feather was immediately charred to ash. The spark disappeared.

"I've called the Headmaster," Astrid said. "We need everyone we've got and I'm not sure if it'll be enough as is. The rift ever widens."

"Why can't you stop the ritual?" Harry asked.

"Because we'll kill everyone performing it and leave England a crater."

Harry only began to realize the true seriousness of the situation then.


	20. The Circle Closes

Author's Note: A little bit of magical theory from Dumbledore here. Some of you will love it, others, well, you don't have to understand all of it - but it'll make what happens a lot more awesome, I think.

Also: WOO 100k views!

**Kaleidoscope**

In the Fae Courts, there were debts which were spoken and debts which were unspoken.

And she owed nothing to Winter any longer.

It was Solstice night, a decade since she had been fifteen years of age and she could move on.

To greener pastures, to a less cold part of the uncaring universe.

To fulfill her ambition of killing Gellert Grindelwald.

"I was the daughter of Winter. I have regained my humanity, relearned my compassion. I am warm once more."

But she wasn't powerful, not yet. She had paid her debt of ten years of service to remove that terrible curse upon her body. She had paid her debt of wasting the Queen's time by running at Gellert Grindelwald as though her life was worth nothing.

But tonight, it was over. Tonight, she would hand in her application for study at the Clock Tower.

Tonight was a night of contemplation.

Who were the Fae to humanity? There was no conceivable way they could stay on this plane, that she was so familiar with, that she had missed for so long. They were anathemas to the balance in the world, even if they balanced themselves.

Gaia sent Counter-Guardians against the intrusion of the Fae once their borrowed power ran out. And very few could be used to continually slaughter men, women and children to keep them there. They drained the life of humanity in seconds, wizards and mages in minutes.

Ironic. Maya Rorkin looked no older than fifteen. She had probably borrowed ten years of her own life, but she didn't know it.

But tonight was a strange night, because there was a hint of power in the air, a hint of the Courts.

The one which was weakest at this moment. She might have been forty miles away from that little town where only evil reigned, but she could feel it even here.

She could feel the way that the Fae distorted the Universe, created a semblance of a different kind of order all together.

The ice in her veins which had not yet thawed screamed at her to fight whatever was here and screamed words of caution in the same tone.

There was something powerful very close by.

She smiled at the aide, pushing back her hair forever tainted to glow a midnight blue by light of sun or torch and flashed a smile at a rather attractive blonde girl waiting in line before her.

**Gather**

The wards in the home of Nicholas Flamel were airtight. It took serious magical ability to even realize they existed, so there was a small (and ever smaller) list of people who could appear in his waiting room.

Kischur always just appeared in his study, if he just wanted to chat. In the event of emergencies, the man had the nerve to show up in his bedroom. He had nearly taken out the man's eyes for the offense, but it had been justified that one time.

This was a signature he recognized, something as fundamental as he was. There was a measure of insanity, of the breakdown of sanity.

Well, he'd never said that the girl couldn't come calling, but he certainly didn't appreciate it.

"We have a guest," Perenelle said, though she knew he had known as quickly as she. "Will you greet her?"

Nicholas sighed heavily, wandering out of his sitting room. He was indulging in one of his favorite habits - wine straight from the bottle and cheap sushi from a relatively nearby supermarket. He particularly enjoyed it because Perenelle thought the entire business was disgusting, but did it with him anyway.

He almost laughed aloud at the sheer relief on her face.

"The Association probably wants you for something important."

He shook his head. "I'm sure they can wait. I mean, we don't get to do this often and we-"

"Nicholas! You have responsibilities!"

"Alright, alright," he grumbled.

As he expected, the girl waiting was the Blue, who seemed to have a terrible headache. "The Green told me to summon you."

Nicholas frowned. "You left her alone in a fight?"

"No," Blue said, playing with her hair. "Fight hasn't started yet. She thinks it's something really big. She's got a ton of Gaia's energy in-"

Nicholas was all business now. "Was she pulling from ley lines or was it from the Root?"

Blue squinted, thinking. "Hmm, it was hard to tell. There was a strong ley where we were, but she wasn't cloaked in it. It was more a part of her than anything. I think there were a bunch of people doing some power exchange ritual, but they probably botched it because it started to look like a summoning ritual."

"Today's the Solstice," Nicholas realized, paling. "We need to go now." Nicholas gritted his teeth.

"They're in a place known as Bones manor, in Aylesbury," Blue said.

His eyes widened. "Is Astrid mad?" he gasped. "There are _things_ buried in Aylesbury. Secrets and lies and Astrid should know better than to be taking part in a ritual performed _there_."

Blue grabbed Nicholas by the elbow and they disappeared.

**The Storm**

Astrid was worried because the strength of the magic from within the center of the circle was rising exponentially every few seconds. She had expected a huge surge of power, evil to her, addictive and enticing to the participants including her daughter, but it showed no sign of stopping.

There was very clearly something within the circle and now she was doing her best to contain the power from leaking through space and time like some sort of beacon.

Because there were other things in the world that weren't wizards. She fought some of them.

There was a reason that Bones Manor was neutral ground.

It was because it was surrounded by the magical equivalent of a no-fly zone.

"Harry, listen to me and listen to me now. This is extremely important. When whatever the hell that is arrives, we're all going to fight with it. It's going to be very powerful and it's going to have the ability to contaminate you with something that even magic can't cure."

Harry nodded.

"There's a concept known as Alaya. I can't explain it, but just know that it means that you have to pretend nothing but you exists. At best, only four other people are going to show up besides you and I. You are going to need to pretend that nothing. But. You. Exists. Not me, not Daphne, not anything else. Everything is a product of your mind. The stability in the circle- it's breaking."

There was no flash of light, no keening wail. There wasn't anything quite as dramatic as Harry would have believed. If he had been watching with his eyes activated, he was sure that he would have seen some sort of change, but the clarity of magic was only as exact as another wizard's without them.

A girl that was Harry's age sat in the circle, almost a mirror of Daphne in her little green dress. She had the purest white hair that he had ever seen and when she looked up and scanned the crowd, Harry realized that it was the most beautiful girl he had ever seen in his entire life.

"In this scenario, there's nothing to do but _strike_." Astrid's pupils turned into slits and a miasma of pulsating green energy appeared around her like a cloud. She disappeared in a flash of blue and white and was suddenly in the circle, behind the unhumanly beautiful girl. She threw her palms outwards and there was an explosion of light and sound which knocked everyone down.

Harry was driven down to his knees by the sheer suffocating presence of this wild magic.

His eyes activated involuntarily, cutting through the flying clods of dirt. He watched with a sinking heart when he realized that Astrid and the Faerie were now locked in some sort of contest of will. Astrid was now several meters from the Faerie, a trio of beams of light extending from her fingertips. The beams appeared to be tunneling through some sort of mirror of the magic which surrounded Astrid, in a burning bright orange and red.

Abruptly, Astrid dropped as though her strings had been cut and she crumpled to the floor. Her magic receded.

"How very amazing," the girl said. Harry felt a tremble of something through him, some strange rewarding sensation which forced his heart of hammer, at the sound of the voice. It was as pure as a summer breeze.

It was very warm for winter-time.

"I haven't met anyone who's thought to challenge me on my own grounds."

Astrid shifted and groaned.

"No matter, that power is too dangerous for any mortal to have, even if it belonged to my court. Perhaps, if your achievements in this life were great enough, your soul will continue to exist on the Throne of Heroes."

It was clear that something the girl had been channeling was complete, because there was a mournful note and she raised her hand. Harry knew she was to eliminate Astrid.

"No!" he shouted, but the Faerie paid him no heed.

The heat increased by amazing proportions, then the Faerie let some spell fly.

It traveled through the air, burning into Harry's consciousness forever.

And then there was a flash of flame and a song more beautiful than Harry had ever heard, of death and rebirth and the struggles of humanity.

Albus Dumbledore had arrived, between the trajectory of the spell and Astrid, in robes of midnight blue and dancing stars, in his hand a wand that Harry had never seen before, a cold and dark majesty of power. Around his neck was a cloak of shimmering silver which changed his very nature into something more secretive.

The bolt of light impacted with the cloak and the cloak absorbed it. Dumbledore barely reacted to it, but Harry saw the strain in the wildly fluctuating strands of his emotions.

Astrid had managed to struggle back to her feet.

"Can't kill it, Albus. We have to seal it and send it back."

Dumbledore agreed. "I'll hold it off for a while. See if you can recover a bit of your strength for now."

He turned around. "Blaze of the First Fractal, attend me!" he cried and the afternoon sun rose into the sky. His left sleeve burned off in its entirety.

There was a strange current of anger in the Fae that Harry would not have realized without his eyes.

"You are of Summer," Dumbledore said. "Wear not a false face."

Whatever glamour the girl was wearing had fallen away and now she was a woman, her eyes mocking and devious in a way that could not possibly be confused for human. Her beauty was an afterthought by this point, put aside by her wild, unchecked _power_.

But Dumbledore was not afraid, though even Harry could see the divide, the gulf between them.

"You will be an interesting man to kill, Albus Dumbledore. You possess not the strength to rework the world, but you have no traits of weakness whatsoever."

Dumbledore staggered under the weight of her words, judging him so plainly, but he never fell.

"This is your great ability, your concept, so to speak. Desperation. But not the desperation of thought. The desperation of soul. No matter how many times you are taken to the floor, you will rise yet again to do battle once more."

His expression was still serene, but Harry could see the maelstrom of emotions encompassing the man.

"Livius chose very well. You are the true inheritor of his True Chords, a little human thing which rivaled even your stolen power."

"Did you know my teacher?" Dumbledore spoke, his voice not very different from a tone of curious politeness he would have adopted during a tea-time conversation.

"That shouldn't be the question you should be asking, Albus Dumbledore. That question is whether or not you really want to attract the attention of the Faerie who killed him."

And then, Astrid was recovered. "Seal her, Albus! The Six Sutras of the Platform, do it! We have three points!"

They formed two legs of an awkward triangle around the Fae.

"Harry, remember. NOTHING!" Astrid shouted, her voice sounding with a hint of the cause being lost.

Harry burst into motion, running towards them and Dumbledore had already begun to chant.

Harry felt the magic push through him and he let it go.

"Nothing, nothing but the magic…"

But it was impossible, for there was suddenly the presence of not one, not two, but three extremely powerful forces in the area, forcing his attention to their arrival.

His eyes were drawn at first to a grizzled old warrior with strongly Germanic features and a connection to him which he could not truly understand.

He knew instinctively that this man was similar to him, that he had done great things, had understood… _understood the turns of the_- Harry didn't know what it meant, he didn't understand himself, much less someone else and that little word was beyond him. What did the man understand? What was he supposed to understand?

The operation of-

The multitude of lights and color and sound in the k-

No, still nothing. He wasn't ready.

NOTHING. He must pay attention to nothing. Nothing at-

And the girl, with her long red hair and almost elfin features, who had dipped her toes into insanity, into the the collapse, into the oh-so-blue sea of-

NOTHING.

But his teacher's teacher was here. This was Nicholas Flamel, the sorcerer of sorcerers, the grand forefather of alchemy, the legend of the Philosopher's Stone, who was the Void, the Truth of all things, the-

NOTHING.

He could have nothing!

The girl stood between him and Dumbledore. The graying man had taken the spot between him and Astrid. Flamel was across from him in this strange circle.

NOTHING.

THERE WAS… NOTHING.

But nothing was slipping. This was too interesting.

Harry felt a pang of shame. He could not fail them, would not fail them. They were legends, legends he had seen and met or heard of or even legends who were to be.

HE was a legend, he _would _be a legend. If he survived this night and if he were to survive this night he would have to make a contract with his interest, to hold it off until later.

NOTHING.

And there were other presences there, suddenly, presences which also shook the world. They were strange, alien, anathemas, which Harry could not or would not understand, things that hurt to look at. He was sure his eyes were bleeding once more.

He tried to pull the magic away but the misery that saturated the air was too much.

He tried to think. He tried to be nothing. He wanted to be one with the collapsed people all around him, their magic all seeped away to keep this ritual going.

NOTHING.

No, he mustn't.

But unlike the other, more skilled, more practiced magicians and wizards and sorcerers around him, he could not keep up the illusion of nothing.

"Well, they're all here, ready for the taking, aren't they?" a harsh, voice crowed.

"We can have vengeance. Vengeance for the Lord!" Another voice.

Darkness.

"Do not." A commander. "Strout. Svelten. Welcome to my lands. Well, let me reiterate. Welcome to the only portion of my lands which I do not have full control over. Welcome to Aylesbury."

The harsher voice again. "Those two. They nearly killed me. I will have my own, sweet vengeance as well!" This must have been Strout. "You're too grounded in what's proper and what's not, Ortenrosse! We can destroy them - look, they don't even realize we are here."

The other voice, Svelten. "Except for that young boy. That beautiful young boy. What is he doing in this circle of six points? I count legends." His voice became almost reverent, but certainly mocking. "Albus Dumbledore, the head of the living Wizards. Two primary Colors of the Mage's Association. The Philosopher. And the Kaleidoscope himself."

And then it came to Harry. That was the word. This was the meaning. This man, and he, shared something called the Kaleidoscope. He knew it, but what was it.

"And this boy is distracted. A student perhaps? Do go back to not being distracted. I'm very sure that, despite it all, none of us truly wish to see whatever you are holding back."

But this Ortenrosse character knew that he was only making it more difficult for Harry.

Harry screwed his eyes shut. It was easier when no one was addressing him.

That way, he could pretend that the voice from within the circle, the voice speaking to him and him only didn't exist.

Too late.

He had acknowledged it.

Odysseus had heard the sirens. Odysseus was untied.

He was swimming towards the sound. There was sound. There was no more silence.

And the world was crashing in on him.

He kept channeling the magic, but Astrid's warning should have been heeded better. He was contaminated by whatever spiritual entity, a Faerie?

"Oh, I see it. You're so cute. You were able to hold it together for so long."

The voice was musical. The voice was perfect. The voice was teasing him - power that could be his. Understanding beyond his wildest dreams. War, excess, potential!

"This is upsetting. Your companions seem strong enough to keep me contained despite the loss of your concentration. This is Solstice Night and this _is_ the night when I am at weakest, of course. If this were Midsummer's, you would be the reason they all burned."

Harry tried to tune out the voice again, but it was like some disease. He had caught it already.

"Hey. Pay attention to me. I'm not so terrible as to actually go through with that threat. You overestimate how much I truly care about this, Harry Potter."

No. Think of Nothing. Don't listen.

A pair of hands ran through his hair and he felt the Faerie's breath on his ear.

"You are a little young yet, but one day, you're going to need me. And you're going to want me."

Harry didn't know what could have made him stupid enough as to vocally acknowledge her. "No I won't."

"Well, whoever the boy is, he's the weakest link," the voice of Strout sounded. "He's cracked. I think Dumbledore's compensating for him right now."

"That bad?" Ortenrosse wondered. "There must be a Counter-Guardian in there. Or perhaps a Faerie. You never know. Judging from these people standing around - one of them is wearing Fate/Materials on his cloak, it could be anything."

"What if it were the Lord? What if they're holding back the Crimson Moon?" Svelten asked.

"Even if they were, we can't risk disrupting them. The backlash will kill everything, including our newly rebirthed Lord. That is, if it even is our newly rebirthed Lord."

"And it's not." A female voice. Sensual and strange. She was not identified.

"Hey, don't listen to them. They won't be able to hurt you, Harry. They'll probably fail at hurting Dumbledore and the Green as well. Both have a lot of experience dealing with those things after all. Let's have a little chat, Harry."

"I don't want to talk with you. If Nicholas Flamel is here to stop you, himself, you're probably something bad. And you've probably done things to hurt me already, that I don't know about."

"Don't be so childish, Harry. We both have much to gain from knowing one another. My name is Aurora." The voice was so pure, so beautiful. Harry felt a bit of liquid run down the side of his ear. He was bleeding. "Why don't you tell me a little bit about yourself? A story, if you will."

"That's all you want from me? A story. One story and you promise to go back to where you came from?"

His eyes were open now. And by god, he couldn't describe how beautiful she looked. Oh, if he had the words.

Aurora smiled. "Yes. One story. And a promise. That you'll seek me out and speak to me once again. And tell me another story. Whatever you want at that point, you'll want. But all you owe me right now are two stories. One told now and one later. And I'll leave you to be defended from some big bad bloodsuckers, one who would love to be touching you like I am now."

Her hands were running down his back, her face too close. Harry wasn't sure he liked it or not.

Harry sighed in relief.

"Okay. Let me tell you the story of Egbert, Godelot and Uric. Once upon a time, there was a man named Egbert Prewett, who had spent his life learning the ins and outs of the magics related to the manipulation of things he molded of the Earth. He was a good man and kind and he had a teacher who imparted upon him the secrets of a very powerful magic which travelled down the line of Merlin."

"The First Blaze," she whispered, her lips tickling his cheeks.

"When Egbert was not yet thirty years of age, a man named Emeric fought and killed his teacher for the possession of a very powerful wand, known as the Deathstick, or the Wand of Destiny. Emeric was known as The Evil, because he had committed some grave sins to magic which nobody could or wanted to understand. Egbert swore vengeance and received it, fighting Emeric to a standstill despite the wand - three times, before he finally killed the man by bringing down his fortress. Only the wand and a single finger could be recovered."

"But then Egbert rested on his laurels and took a student rather than continually improving his abilities, didn't he?"

Harry nodded, a stray strand of hair brushing against his nose.

"And one day, a young follower of Emeric, a man by the name of Godelot, Godelot Lestrange, decided that he would win the wand back. Godelot murdered Egbert as the man left a bank and stole his wand from him and tortured Uric into insanity. But Uric recovered in the arms of his beloved, Egbert's second child, a beautiful daughter with red hair. And he swore that he would recycle revenge upon Godelot."

"A cycle hot, a cycle cold, a cycle that will never end. Round and round and round and round - this is how you turn revenge." Clearly, Aurora had read Havelock Sweeting as well and she was just humoring him.

"And he did. He took his master's body, a man who would have been his father one day, and cut away the First Blaze and wore it for himself. And he was the only man insane enough to win the Wand of Elder in a duel."

"You would have made a good bard, Harry," she said. And there was a blossom of pride and something else, something so happy about the fact that he had pleased her in any way that it jumped up and down in his chest. "Tell your Headmaster that he might see me again, if he survives this coming battle."

And with that, she disappeared.

The quickest reaction was from Zelretch.

"Our fight is unfinished!" he shouted. Astrid immediately reached for Harry and pulled him back behind a line formed by Flamel, Zelretch and Dumbledore.

In front of them, several meters further than the softly moaning body of Daphne Greengrass on the floor was a collection of _things_ that those around him seemed to recognize.


	21. Finale One: Ascension

Anon reviewer: Answer placed in the forums under the thread "Uncertainty".

Might be one of the longest chapters I've ever written. I daresay I'm quite proud of it.

**Kaleidoscope**

Harry let his thoughts run over a conversation he had with Dumbledore one November evening, as he sought to forget the disappointment in himself.

"In Mahayana Buddhism, there is the postulate that nothing exists outside of your internal reality, which we know is patently untrue. But there is a specific lesson that we can learn from this thought experiment. If there is nothing outside of internal reality, then there is an infinite amount of external realities which can be realized. Do you understand why that might be the case?"

Harry thought for a moment. "Well, if nothing else exists, then we make what's real, right? When we do that, anything that we make in our heads can be true and it can be anything."

Dumbledore beamed. "Exactly. Now, we know that other people exist for certain. Otherwise, we could easily assume that magic would consist of pointing and thinking. There are enough objects in the world which make no conceivable sense to two different men and this is something we can never breach as one person with one set of possible thoughts."

Harry didn't follow, but usually when he answered correctly, Dumbledore was surprisingly lucid, so he waited.

"What we call the Fractal is a concept based off of Alaya. There is something inherent to our ability to access magic - let's call it the sum total of all magic. This is what mages refer to as the Root. There are many theories, that the Root is actually Fate and magicians are simply tools of Fate used to correct imbalances created by other entities in the world. There are some people believe that the Root is a battery of unlimited power which can be harnessed for better or worse. Those are somewhat juvenile views."

Harry tried to connect Dumbledore's lesson together, but it was clear that he was missing some portion of it.

"Over the years, we've come to understand that there are five major aspects to the root. We call them Creation, Kaleidoscope, Materials, Truth and Remove, words which mean nothing to most and the world to some. These are all pieces of the same Fractal. Tell me, do you know what a fractal is?"

Harry shook his head. "No, not really. It's some repeating image, I think."

"It is our bodhi tree."

"What is a bodhi tree?"

"It is synonymous with the path to enlightenment, or more wisdom."

Harry nodded. "So anything we hear on the path to this wisdom, we reflect. We reflect on? At any rate, whatever our path is, however we treat ourselves, we need to make sure that we're always thinking, always following the path of wisdom?"

Dumbledore nodded. "Words to live by. Now, let us speak in tongues and espouse a somewhat different view. Bodhi is fundamentally without any tree, the bright mirror is also not a stand, fundamentally there is not a single thing - where could any dust be attracted?"

"So, Alaya?" Harry guessed.

Dumbledore's expression convinced Harry to think about the topic a little more.

"Okay, so if we're fundamentally nothing, if everything's all inside us, then this tree is just abstract. And there is no mirror. It's all in our head."

Dumbledore nodded as Harry proceeded cautiously.

"But we know that Alaya isn't real. That there is really a tree, that there really is a mirror, right?"

Dumbledore nodded again.

**A Hero At Last**

Dumbledore's hand ran through his beard in a gesture of discomfort. "Well, this is a rather interesting predicament we have gotten ourselves into, old friend," Dumbledore said, completely understating how dire the circumstances were.

Flamel let his eyes wander from one face to another and his heart sank.

The situation had gone from quite inconvenient to downright terrible straight to apocalyptic.

In the far left field of his vision stood Trhvmn Ortenrosse, once a man, now a monster. Perhaps he had always been cursed to be this in-between existence known as a Dead Apostle. Once, he was a magus who waited on Zeus-on-the-Golden-Throne at the gilded tables of Mount Olympus, but after that so-called God passed, Ortenrosse had become the White Wing Lord, his hair bleached from the years and years of magical experimentation that a glamour could not hide. He was the King of these _things_ which were gathered before them.

And he had a bone to pick with this one specifically. Ortenrosse had some _history_ with his dear Perenelle. The White Wing had raped her before he was even born and she had stolen his manhood from him - with it went his libido and any sense of morality that the vampire could have possibly had. Flamel had desired this confrontation for very many years, but he had wanted it on his own terms. Ortenrosse would have been surrounded by his pledged anyway, but nothing quite so dire as what lay before them now.

To the King's left were the White and Black Knights, Fina-blood Svelten and Rizo-Waal Strout. They were known to the world as bodyguards, of a certain princess who he would have declined a fight with on her own. But they weren't bodyguards as much as lords in their own right. There was precious little he knew about their powers or their abilities - nearly no one had survived them. There were dark whispers about some inclinations that Svelten possessed and both Astrid and Blue had done battle with Strout, winning even. But both had failed to kill him the last time they had met, not further than a fortnight previously. Strout was clearly recovered from his humiliation at their hands. Nicholas was sure that he had different tricks this time around.

But more worrying a prospect as fighting Ortenrosse with two of his greatest retainers was fighting his daughter.

He had two, two that he loved so much, or at least pretended to. Arcuied and Altrouge were both prodigal, but while the former had only threatened to kill her mother once in a while, Altrouge was the one he wished he had never birthed.

Most outsiders who could get away with it - namely Zelretch, thought it was funny when he claimed that his daughters had daddy issues, but considering the vast scope of their magical prowess and their sheer love of blood and war…

Nicholas sighed heavily. Altrouge was the product of infidelity. The only time he had strayed, when he had blamed Perenelle for raising a daughter who followed the teaching of the Crimson Moon, the teaching of humanity's worst enemy. The Crimson Moon that his oldest friend had given everything in this world and the next to kill.

She looked at him now, forever stuck on the cusp of adulthood, with a body that was maintained by the sacrifice of virgin girls in the prime of their innocent beauty. Altrouge was playing her hair, a soft and glossy black silk he had brushed several centuries ago.

Her hand lingered on a ribbon that his own hands had tied.

"I've never asked you before. Do you like my dog, Father?" she asked, her voice carrying over the wind rather earnestly.

The dog in question was the source of all their tactical troubles. This was the Murder of Primates on a leash, named for its birth - a desire by Gaia to eliminate these humans who had damaged her so. This was everything that _Homo Sapiens Sapiens_ had ever run from in the evolutionary cycle. A monster that his daughter had taught to drink the blood of humanity. If this weren't all a game to Altrouge, the scores of wizards and witches which surrounded them on the ground would have been dead the moment this host of Dead Apostles had arrived.

To his eternal shame, Nicholas contemplated leaving for a moment. Zelretch would be fine, a pocket dimension or even the next world within his grasp at the speed of sound. Albus, despite being the personification of humanity, had the Blaze, an arcane power which could hold off the Murder until he left by wings of his Phoenix.

But that would be two hundred and fifty heads on his silver plate, two of them being the most promising students whom Albus ever had the pleasure of teaching. One of them, this boy who had ensured the ritual's success, had even taken to his branch of alchemy as though the boy was born to learn.

Perhaps Svelten would keep young, impressionable Harry Potter as a toy in his castle. The boy would be raised under the loving thumb of a creature that would bring out the worst in him. Harry would spill the secrets of his craft, passed down so lovingly and guarded so jealously.

"You should let them go, Altrouge," he decided. "You don't have a quarrel with any of them." He smiled reassuringly. "We can have a talk at a later date. Or even now, if you prefer. Just the two of us, like how it used to be."

Altrouge smiled at him and a chill ran up him spine. This was more than the rictus painted on the face of a predator. This smile had a deliciously sexual overtone to it that made him wish he were anywhere but here. Her fangs were visible. "Well, Father. Don't you think we're so much more happy when…" Something in the smile changed - perhaps it was the addition of unbridled hatred. "When the entire family's around?"

If the process of inappropriate commentary had a patron saint, it would be Kischur Zelretch Schweinorg, but even he was silent and serious. The man pitied Nicholas and there was no time when the pity was more visible than now.

Nicholas walked forwards slowly, his hands hanging on his sides non-aggressively. "Altrouge," he murmured, every inch the loving father. "I've wronged you. I know it. Take out your anger on me. You can hit me if you wish. You can hit me once - I promise I won't retaliate. You've always wanted to."

Two could play a game.

Altrouge's face twisted into a myriad of emotions, some faked, some genuine. Abruptly, she started crying, her beautiful black hair swaying back and forth as she stomped on the ground and shook her head. Nicholas wanted to capture this moment forever - when his younger daughter acted the age she looked.

"You're too fair, Daddy," she complained, her face a mask of indignation. "Why can't you ever show me your passion? Why can't you ever love me like you love _Arcueid_?"

She drew closer, her tears wiped away, the indignation bleeding into a type of seduction some Faerie folk would have envied. "Why can't you love me like you love my mother?"

They were inches from one another.

And then she pounced. Nicholas wondered if he had made a terrible mistake for a moment and he was going to pay for it with either his life or his freedom, but all she did was slam her fist into his stomach with no strength whatsoever.

If anything, his daughter believed in equivalent exchange.

She was sobbing once more, so Nicholas wrapped his arms around her and she buried her face into his chest.

Like a real daughter would.

She rubbed her cheek against him like a cat in heat. "Daddy. Can we please just go somewhere? Can you choose me? Over my sister? Over mother?"

Nicholas wondered if he could spirit her and her mean dog away in a bout of deception, but he knew that Altrouge recognized this farce for what it was.

Because this was their charade. This was something they did because they needed to feel again, they needed to seem normal. Because pretending to be human made their half of the family happy. This was the real reason Nicholas liked drinking wine straight from the bottle and gulping down barely-fresh pieces of supermarket sushi. This was why Altrouge had stolen a lock of her sister's equally beautiful blonde hair to play with whenever there was a full moon.

"Why can't you come home instead?" Nicholas wondered, dragging the game out. He could do this for an eternity. Altrouge knew it, but for the sake of good drama, she always curtailed it. "Why can't you give up on this foolishness?"

"You don't understand me, Daddy." Some of her real emotions leaked out - not too different from the character she pretended to be in this one act play. Nicholas sometimes wondered if Altrouge knew the difference between fiction and reality any longer. "You never understand me." She was a teenager who's parents were strict about drinking. She was that little girl denied a pony. His heart clenched and unclenched and clenched and- "Daddy, you could become one of us! Even mommy could become one of us. And if I feel generous, maybe my sister as well." She smiled like she was sharing a secret with him, then gestured. "We have proof it works! Look at Uncle Zelretch!"

Zelretch continued to look away pointedly as though the entire scene was poisonous to him in some way.

Perhaps it was. Nicholas knew that he had loved both Arcueid and Altrouge as though they were his own. It was as much a blow to the humanity left in the man that even this little pleasure he had in life was corrupted by the Dead Apostles into the abomination before them now.

"Altrouge…" Nicholas trailed off, sure that the hurt he felt was real.

She drew away, suddenly cognizant that she had perhaps bared a little to much of her heart in front of her colleagues and corruptors. "Well, Father. If you don't…" Her voice changed yet again, into that crazy tone that Flamel hated with every fiber of his being and that was the Truth so help him- "I'll kill all of them. And then I'll hunt you down."

Oh and the sexuality was bad and why was this world so wrong and-

"And I'll kill you."

The anger.

"And then, I'll have you at last."

It was a million times worse when she stated it outright. Her tone then took a lascivious turn.

"Maybe I'll have you before I kill you. And punish you like you punished me for so many years. You could have been _mine_, Daddy. If only you had wanted me just a little."

The anger overtook her again and she was now very clearly more and less than human.

"This _will_ end one way or an-"

Time froze.

Nicholas turned around in a snap, confused. Then he saw Blue in a deeper sort of concentration, her eyebrows drawn and a tempest of bluebells in her eyes.

"Okay," she tested, wondering if she finally had built up the concentration to speak. "Okay," she confirmed. "I can only keep this up for two minutes. Stopping time is against the nature of this world and is actually more difficult than time trav-"

Zelretch cut her off in a hurry. "I'll fight with Ortenrosse and my little niece. I've traded blows with both of them in my time and Ortenrosse is a one-trick pony-"

"Yes, the trick is to be the best horse he can be," Flamel could not resist interjecting. He was still emotionally raw from the exchange that he had just had.

"How droll." Zelretch rolled his eyes. "Somebody has to fight Primate Murder. Nobody human can fight it. The way I see it, I have to trade off with you to take its blows, assuming it hasn't gotten faster over the ye-"

"It has," Astrid confirmed. "In this century, the Princess with her Dog by the side is considered a larger threat than the Crimson Moon himself - to humans at least."

Zelretch rolled his eyes. "This world isn't built on power levels, girl." Astrid didn't seem to know what a power level was, but Harry got it from his times watching Dudley play video games. It was certainly the wrong time to snicker, so he carefully arranged his emotions to neutrally negative.

"Only me and Nick can fight Altrouge. Otherwise she'll swing her dog around and have them annihilate them. Actually, Nick, don't fight her. I don't like the comments she made about fucking your corpse."

There was silence.

Zelretch let out a breath he didn't know he had been holding. "I wish we had the sense to bring Perry along. Ortenrosse is still scared shitless of her. Too late. We have a game plan."

"I'll go for round two with Strout. I don't think like the fact that he knows what I can do, but it's not like the Fifth Magic hasn't been studied for hundreds and hundreds of years," Blue said, wondering if she'd escape to rub this fight in everyone's faces. "That leaves Svelten."

"Hold it," Astrid said. "I can fight the Murder. Professor Dumbledore can take Svelten and Strout with Blue. And that leaves both High Zelretch and High Flamel to deal with the Princess and Ortenrosse."

Dumbledore protested immediately. "You cannot think you can even stop it without dying. See some sense, Astrid-"

She shook her head. "Oh, I know. Either I will die, or everyone here has a very slight chance of living. This is a choice that we must make for the Greater Good."

Dumbledore winced and Harry winced with him.

"I'm not you, Albus. When it comes time to make the choice between what is right and what is easy, I will always pick the path of least resistance in defending my daughter. This is probably the easier option. Maybe the stars have decreed that we should all die here as heroes and that Harry will be lost to the goodness of humanity forever. But I can't let it happen. I will see my daughter live."

Dumbledore was stunned by his grief, a physical weight on his body.

Astrid turned to Harry, who had been silenced by the weight of the events which had unfolded around him. "Take care of my Daphne, harry. If you hurt her," her voice turned ominous. "I swear on the Root itself that I will come back to haunt you for eternity."

She smiled, but there was no laughter, there was no charm left. Astrid was as scared as he was.

She sat on her heels, her palms placed on the earth, looking to the west, where the sun had set just several carefree hours ago.

"Sing!" she shouted, her voice with a timbre of confidence that everyone knew she did not have. "Sing me the song of the Root!"

The energy that she had gathered already - Harry knew it instinctively from the similar pattern it took in his vision - surged to the forefront of her existence, painting two bold, identical blood red horizontal marks under her eyes.

She began what Harry understood to be an Aria. He was completely unprepared for how complex, beautiful and impossible it was.

"In the pasture of this world, I endlessly push aside the tall grasses in search of the bull. Following unnamed rivers, lost upon the interpenetrating paths of distant mountains, I feel my feet grow weary and my strength failing for my vitality has been exhausted and I have not seen hide nor hair of the bull. I hear only locusts chirping through the forest in this darkest of all nights…"

Thin lines of pigmentation which resembled the veins of leaves ran over her face and hands.

"Along the riverbank under the trees, I discover footprints. Even under the fragrant grass I see his prints. Deep in remote mountains they are found. These traces no more could be hidden than one's nose when looking skywards. I hear the song of the nightingale and the sun is warm."

Blue who had been struggling to hold the lapse in time, seemed to have found a second wind. Her face had become determined rather than strained.

Astrid had stopped, for whatever reason, though neither the green veins nor the blood red lines had faded from her face or hands.

"Such, such a beautiful world," she whispered in a lament that rang of finality. She had begun to cry, singular droplets of her tears running down her face and dripping onto her robes.

She had begun again. "The wind is mild, willows are green along the shore, here… here, no bull can hide! What artist can draw that massive head, those majestic horns?"

Astrid's head snapped around wildly in a trance. "How can one remember what it was like before she met the bull?" Her voice choked.

Something in her was dying. It was putting up a fight and Harry wasn't sure what it was.

"I seize him with a terrific struggle."

The energy around her surged, the lines were more apparent. Whatever had been dying was losing ground fast. This energy that she had gathered was close to what had been building in the summoning circle.

It was clear to Harry now. Astrid was dying. Not her body, not even her mind. But whatever made Astrid despite all of that…

Harry began to bleed from his left eye - he knew it because his vision cleared even further and he could see the strands of those emotions in the only woman who had ever been motherly to him leave her, plucked out by this influx of magic from the world, magic from nature - one at a time.

Harry did not deactivate his eyes - he didn't even squeeze them shut. This was his tribute to her.

"His great will and power are inexhaustible. He charges to the high plateau far above the cloud-mists, or in an impenetrable ravine he stands."

And Dumbledore was now kneeling, his face in his hands. Zelretch looked more grim and old that he had ever been. Flamel held a mask of apathy, but Harry could see from the clenching of his fists that even he was affected.

Blue, like Harry, was crying - her willpower had been extended and she was having no more trouble keeping the dilation in time aloft, a strength born of sorrow and desperation.

And then, when the last strand disappeared, Harry knew that Astrid was dead. She was no more alive than those things which were confronting them.

"The whip and rope are necessary, else the Bull might stray off down some dusty road. Being well trained, he becomes naturally gentle. Then, unfettered, he obeys his master."

Astrid's expression had found a peace no living human being could possibly know.

"Perhaps we will spend our lives, forged in the fire known as enmity. But when the day is done and the last battle is had, we wish to end in serenity," Harry quoted, from Sweeting yet again, as though the man's words were a prayer.

Dumbledore nodded solemnly and stood up.

Astrid nodded at Blue to drop her spell and the barrier dissipated into the wind.

"-other," Altrouge finished - it had been an eternity since she had last spoken, and perhaps the vampires sensed that something was not right, because the girl had paled.

"Counter-Guardian!" Ortenrosse screamed, throwing himself to the floor. Svelten and Altrouge, too, were quick enough, but Murder of Primates, the target of Astrid's spell, and Strout, who had turned his head in response to his liege lord, were instantly incased by cocoons of plant matter.

Astrid's eyes met Flamel's and Harry knew that something important had been exchanged between them, because Flamel raised his hands into the heavens.

"This is the Truth as spoken by the Lord of Philosophers. Today, the Murder of Primates was restrained by the Counter-Guardian, a Caster known as Astrid Greengrass, in an exchange of her existence on the mortal plane, for as long as it took her former friends and family to defeat and escape the might of those who forced her to make her sacrifice."

Harry knew that the blood-red glow coming from within Nicholas Flamel's chest was the Philosopher's Stone.

"The exchange is confirmed to be equivalent. The Truth is written!" he roared.

The cocoon dragged the Murder of Primates into the good Earth and literally crushed Rizo-Waal Strout, sending dark black ichor everywhere.

Even as Dumbledore raised a shield to prevent the liquid from touching any of them, Astrid Greengrass was taking her leave.

She had vanished into nonbeing - that is, to say, everything.

**Hemorrhage **

It wasn't often that a battle between titans was put on hold.

Strout had been destroyed, at least to Harry's eyes, in a never-ending shower of that disgusting black matter.

Even Zelretch looked completely uncertain, as if he didn't understand why Strout was destroyed rather than released.

Harry could see the others running through this Truth that the Philosopher had written in their minds.

Altrouge, who was decidedly immaculate compared to the other vampires, scooped up a small amount of the rapidly disappearing Rizo-Waal Strout with an errant finger.

She smiled, then flicked it away. "Weak. And quite lacking in personality. He was not a good guard," she said, in a tone that one would take when commenting about an unpleasant occurrence to a distant acquaintance.

Altrouge walked over to Daphne Greengrass and picked the girl up. It had happened so suddenly in context that no one had done anything to stop her. She cradled Daphne gently.

Harry refrained from screaming, allowing his eyes to widen just so slightly.

"To think, that we've lost the greatest advantage we've had in generations due to a concept as ridiculous as love." Altrouge paused, tilting her head slightly. Her hair cascaded over Daphne's still form. "Can you seriously believe that something like that would have even come out of my mouth?"

Daphne stirred.

"What's your name?"

"Don't tell her!" Harry shouted, believing that it would be some sort of folly, but the girl had already mumbled into Altrouge's arm.

She scoffed at him. "So deliciously innocent. As if I didn't know it already. I just wanted to hear the words issue from her own lips. Daphne. How nice." She sounded almost sincere. She turned suddenly and looked into the sky. Harry allowed himself to see the threads and currents of intentions simply moving through the air. There was something in the air.

"I believe there's someone important coming," she said, looking meaningfully at Ortenrosse, who paled ever so slightly.

It wasn't in the air - it was in the wind, Harry could see as much.

The saturation increased and a slight breeze began to pick up.

And then the wind was howling.

"Ortenrosse!" the wind screamed.

And the battle was joined.

"Ortenrosse is mine!"

Flamel began to fire his spells, choosing to purposefully avoid Altrouge as Svelten began to summon some kind of power to bear.

Zelretch worked in tandem with him, utilizing a galaxy of mystic codes to disrupt or distract Svelten from whatever he was trying to do.

Altrouge took a step back and that was all it took for Harry to lose all calm. "Daphne!" Harry shouted, running into the fray and masterfully jumping over a burst of sweeping white light that Ortenrosse had released with just the twitch of his finger.

Harry stared at Altrouge, who he was rapidly approaching. She looked back at him with no small amount of contempt.

Harry fired a curse at her from several meters off, but though he was sure it was aimed perfectly, it went wide by a fairly large margin.

"My, my. This isn't very intelligent. Aren't you supposed to be a magus and not some sort of street fighter?" She made a movement with her forefinger and he pitched forward into a nasty fall. He picked himself up and glared at her.

"Give her back!" Harry shouted, his eye still bleeding.

Altrouge just glided over to him slowly, strangely unaffected by the chaos around her. She looked at Daphne. "What exactly is so special about this girl, to inspire such loyalty? Especially from someone like that woman?"

"Her daughter," Harry said, a tad coldly. "But you knew that?" His voice changed to something more uncertain. He was genuinely confused.

Whatever that Harry had seen in her shifted. "Isn't it nice?" she remarked offhandedly, "to have a mother who loves you enough to die for you?"

If the question had been intentionally loaded, Harry had been played like a fool, because he reacted rather violently. He fired yet another curse at her, but it, too, swerved out of the way.

"How about this. I'll let you have her back if you tell me what exactly you had met in that Containment."

Harry didn't think lightning could strike twice, but it appeared as though today was a good day for these types of deals.

"A Faerie," he answered honestly, trying to reconcile his emotions about that thing which had called herself Aurora.

She sneered at him. "Do, please, be a little less specific than that."

Harry took a deep breath and responded with his own glare. "A Faerie. She claimed that her powers were weakest today and that her name was Aurora. She wanted me to tell her a story. And I did."

Altrouge's mouth opened in some sort of faux surprise. Harry looked with some trepidation at the abnormally sharp canine teeth. "To think, I was going to kill you and let you die slowly in little Daphne's arms. I would have made the Summer Lady very upset at me, indeed."

Harry swallowed, his anger abated by the sudden realization of how dire his situation was. From what he could glean of that Zelretch's tactics, this was the most powerful of the vampires here and he was currently stuck behind the others, who were holding off his mentors and the other three powerful mages on his side.

Altrouge floated closer and leaned over to whisper in his ear. She was only a tad taller than him.

"Are you afraid, Harry? You can _tell me the truth_," she said, an odd timbre in her voice making him pause.

Harry nodded almost without realizing he did, wondering how she had learned his name.

She gave his cheek a peck. "Now, you don't have to be afraid, you know. You're Dumbledore's student, right? And my daddy taught him. So you can think of me as a big sister of sorts! Or maybe even some older girl you can have a crush on," she teased, her voice mischievous.

Harry was sure that the girl was insane.

There was another roar of wind, this time a lot louder, and Harry was off his feet and on his back. Even Altrouge had been driven several steps back. The multitude of participants of that terrible Solstice circle were sent flying.

Yet another person he had never seen before had appeared in the clearing. Zelretch looked up at her and snorted. "How nice of you to conveniently show up when we already have the situation under control, Lorelei," he grumbled. His voice could be heard through the suddenly silent clearing.

The woman had vaguely pretty features that most people would pass in the street without truly noticing, but there was a certain sort of presence which Harry felt to be unique in perhaps her stance.

He knew that she was the one who had summoned the wind on the battlefield.

It appeared that Dumbledore recovered quicker than anyone else, because he had found his opening already. His switched his wand to his left hand and a globe of red-orange light erupted from his fingertips, bathing Ortenrosse and Svelten in the strange color.

Flamel and Zelretch were clearly familiar with the spell, because they too did the same.

In Dumbledore's other hand, his wand danced along with Flamel's, while Zelretch's light continued to increase in intensity.

Ortenrosse and Svelten were instantly transfixed by the light, which seemed to blend with their presences. They seemingly phased out of existence itself, leaving behind unmoving wraiths.

"Well, this is a little inconvenient," Altrouge said. "I'd hate to fight my way out of this. But if I had to, I'm sure little Harry here would die first."

"You believe you can escape me, Apostle?" It was the woman, Lorelei, who had spoken.

Altrouge smiled back, every inch nobility granting a boon to her subjects. "Now, now. I was speaking to the adults here. Would you prefer to live or die, Harry?" She smiled at the boy, now several steps in front of her.

Harry glared, realizing that he had been used to insult that woman.

Altrouge turned back to Lorelei. "Now, look at yourself, scion of Barthomeloi. Do you truly believe you register on the scale known to me as 'threatening' here?"

She gestured at the trio of Flamel, Zelretch and Dumbledore, their faces screwed up in concentration as their wands stayed outstretched, binding Svelten and Ortenrosse in space-time.

"These are the giants of modern magic, the Lord of the Kaleidoscope, the Lord Philosopher and the Lord of the First Blaze. You may be one of the talents in your generation, but compared to my father you are just another spark in the long night."

Harry didn't think he had ever seen someone as insulted as Lorelei of Barthomeloi, but the anger seemed to have been born of acceptance rather than just pride. It was Albus Dumbledore who had always said that it was far more difficult to forgive someone for being right.

"Now, I believe we can come to a deal here. My Knights and the White Wing Lord are lost to me already. But I am royalty and I refuse to leave without my dues. I'll be taking this girl and-"

Harry's mouth opened, but it was not his voice that refuted the claim.

"You may not leave with Daphne Greengrass. It would be highly responsible for me to allow you to take my partner's last legacy and Astrid would haunt Harry here forever."

Harry made a brief note at the surprise on Lorelei's face, but his focus was sucked into the vision of madness and ecstasy that came with the casting of particularly powerful magics in Blue's expression. This was someone he didn't know - that he had only seen on Dumbledore's face when the man performed feats of alchemy in demonstration.

Altrouge, who was the only person more insane than Blue in this gathering, looked her up and down. "As cliche as this sounds, who are you to stop me? You have extremely imprecise control of the Fifth Fractal. You'll be threatening in ten years if I don't deign it necessary to put you down like a dog or give you the pleasure of _writhing_ under my body, but…"

Altrouge smiled at Harry and he flinched. "The same could be said for little Harry here."

Blue nodded slowly, her breath coming in heavy waves as she _exhaled_ magic in her speech. "You're right. But you're going to let her go anyway." She sounded so sure, so crazy that it scared Harry to the bone and he knew it was so. "Because if you don't, I'll be using my… _extremely imprecise control_ to take me back to a time before this all began. And damn you all to the shifting of the Root. I'll go back to a time before English was spoken. Before my mother tongue was derived from Chinese. Before Ortenrosse was licking the feet of Athene."

She grinned, a wolf's smile. "My sister did always say that only someone human could possibly believe in such monstrous genocide. But I'm willing to take my chances. And if it'll only take me ten years to be threatening…" she trailed off, her smile widening into a split of that terrible ecstasy and some branch of Zen. "Then you'd better believe that by the time you're born, I"ll be able to wipe away your existence with a stray thought."

And Altrouge smiled back. Harry thought her smiles ranged from strange and strangely seductive to angry and angrily conniving, but he was wrong. She looked truly happy in this moment, in this little conflict that defied all logic. "It appears that I have found a worthy opponent in you. Take the girl."

She dropped Daphne to the ground unceremoniously and cast a clinical eye on the other combatants. "I'm sure Svelten will weasel out of this mess, somehow. Give my regards to dear Trhvmn. Perhaps he'll have better luck in the next life."

Harry blinked and Altrouge was gone.

Blue looked over Harry with a worried eye. "Perhaps it'd be best if you lay down and slept, Harry. We'll deal with it from here."

Harry was pretty sure no magic had been cast on him, but the compulsion to do so was stronger than any he had ever felt before. He walked over to Daphne and lay on the oh-so-green grass besides her and closed his eyes.

**The Message**

Harry realized he had been propped up on a chair haphazardly when he woke. Though he was no stranger to waking up in a seated position after long nights of study, the practice made his aching back no less annoying.

For just a moment, he hoped that it had all been a dream, that he had hit his head during his stay at Neville's place and imagined those terrible events which had unfolded.

He let this fantasy continue until his finger came up to the left side of his face. He scratched off a small amount of dried, caked blood that had run down his cheek and examined the earthen color under his fingernails.

Harry looked around. Though he had already ascertained he was in Dumbledore's office, he had not expected to see Daphne several scant inches away from him, in her own seat. She was still sleeping, and in danger of falling out of her chair.

"Daphne."

The girl shifted to a less precarious position, waking. She turned to him, drinking in the disgusting sight of battle and glory and the dead littered over his face in blood and emotion.

"She's dead."

Harry couldn't say anything, so he didn't speak.

"To be honest, I expected it." Her words were cold, her eyes were warm and her fists were clenched.

There was a sort of smugness to her tone, as though she had been proven right yet again. "I laughed. I laughed at her because I knew she was powerful and I laughed because I knew she was foolish. The great texts of our forefathers, about the sinking of Atlantis, those terrible lines from Sweeting, they're not wisdoms but warnings."

Daphne was feeling an emotion quite complex, one that Harry had not encountered. He was horrified.

"Every night since that night in the Great Hall, I dreamed the same dream. That Dumbledore would interrupt dinner to tell me that my mother's died. Undoubtedly, it would be some great glory. A princess of vampires, by the side of legends which had watched the world turn. And when she died, the world would have stopped."

Her anger was so much like Draco's, but so different. She grinned.

"And she made the world stop. But she died for it. I gave her a hug, you know, that night. She didn't know why I was laughing. I didn't know why I was laughing. When she took the Color. Because she was the color. The master of spies in the Mage's Association is the master of magics that should only be seen through a little peephole. They should never be used. But when it came time, she was the one beholden to use them. And she paid with her life."

This was beyond Harry now. They had all studied the lore of the world, especially he, but now he was out of his depth.

"And now, she's passed into the empty night. Leaving behind what? A boy she never really liked and a young daughter that she cared too much about."

"A legacy." One of the portraits which lined Professor Dumbledore's office had spoken. "Green is a good color. Green is the color of wisdom and humanity and nature. And of equal measure."

Daphne turned to glare at the portrait, a man with features which made him seem monkey-like.

"Do you recognize me, girl?"

Daphne shook her head.

"You wear my colors. You wear the green."

Harry knew then that this was Salazar Slytherin.

"Mages are a dime a dozen. Cowardly, pathetic, obsessed with their own power. To be a magus, it is said, is to walk the path of one who writes the code for this Universe and the next. This is a path fraught with slow burning cold and empty nothings, which ultimately leads to death. It is to stare on a lonely road stretching out into infinity and to look on as your mind breaks from this stress."

Salazar Slytherin was more than just a mage, but it appeared as though he had gone back to his rest, closing his eyes to indicate that the conversation was over.

But it was not truly Salazar Slytherin, just a shadow of the ideals that wove him. Daphne knew his words as well as the portrait, but she did not repeat them to herself.

She turned to Harry again, a challenge on her face. "And it is to wake up one morning and know that those you love won't be walking with you any longer."

_Will you walk the path with me, Harry Potter_?

If Astrid was alive, she would have pitied her daughter.

But she wasn't and Harry could not. "Her name. The woman who killed her. Her name was Altrouge."

"She will fear me."


End file.
